"A captivating and daunting work of criticism and theory in aesthetic activism. The writing, and the thinking behind it, is beautiful, coruscating, and ethically compelling. This book will raise your IQ about life, and not just about literature. A breathtaking achievement."–James I. Porter, Stone Professor in Literature at the University of California, Berkeley
"Hejinian delights in the obduracy of existence–Oppen's 'mineral fact.' Without abridging this otherness, she reveals it as the dialectical complement of her own and her authors' acts of interpretive intelligence. We get it all: 'the stuff of life' (Woolf) and the life–the relational principle, jostling contexts, particularizing contingencies–of stuff. Call to the Everyday = How to Begin Again and Again (Stein)."–Marjorie Levinson, author of Thinking through Poetry: Field Reports on Romantic Lyric
