A. R. Ammons Quotes
"If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.'"
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Music, Poetry, Correction, Disorder, Question, Words)
"In nature there are few sharp lines."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Nature)
"Is it not careless to become too local when there are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Stars)
"Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Poetry, Living, Years)
"Only silence perfects silence."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Silence)
"Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Poetry)
"Questions structure and, so, to some extent predetermine answers."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Answers, Questions)
"If the greatest god is the stillness all the motions add up to, then we must ineluctably be included."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: God)
"The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry, all that he has learned about poetry, is only a partial assurance."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Poetry, Risk)
"There's something to be said in favor of working in isolation in the real world."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Isolation, World)
"You have your identity when you find out, not what you can keep your mind on, but what you can't keep your mind off."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Identity, Mind)
"I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Change, Successful, Clarity, Meaning, Order, Stability, Stress)
"Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Poetry, Values, Attention, Results)
"Even if you walk exactly the same route each time - as with a sonnet - the events along the route cannot be imagined to be the same from day to day, as the poet's health, sight, his anticipations, moods, fears, thoughts cannot be the same."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Time, Health, Thoughts, Day, Events, Moods, Sight)
"If a poem is each time new, then it is necessarily an act of discovery, a chance taken, a chance that may lead to fulfillment or disaster."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Time, Act, Chance, Disaster, Discovery, Fulfillment, May)
"A poem generated by its own laws may be unrealized and bad in terms of so-called objective principles of taste, judgement, deduction."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Laws, May, Principles, Taste)
"Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful."
- A. R. Ammons
"Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it, teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Poetry, Class, First, Poems, Reading, Teaching)
"Each poem in becoming generates the laws by which it is generated: extensions of the laws to other poems never completely take."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Laws, Poems)
"Everything is discursive opinion instead of direct experience."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Experience, Opinion)
"For though we often need to be restored to the small, concrete, limited, and certain, we as often need to be reminded of the large, vague, unlimited, unknown."
- A. R. Ammons
"I am grateful for - though I can't keep up with - the flood of articles, theses, and textbooks that mean to share insight concerning the nature of poetry."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Nature, Poetry)
"I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Purpose, Man, Past, Reason)
"I take the walk to be the externalization of an interior seeking so that the analogy is first of all between the external and the internal."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: First)
"Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing."
- A. R. Ammons