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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

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A. R. Ammons
Age: 75 †
Born: 1926
Born: February 18
Died: 2001
Died: February 26
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Whiteville
North Carolina
A.R. Ammons
A R Ammons
AR Ammons
Becoming
Law
Generates
Take
Generated
Extensions
Never
Poems
Poem
Laws
Completely

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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
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Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.
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Is it not careless to become too local when there are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone.
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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.
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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
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Though I have looked everywhere / I can find nothing lowly / in the universe.
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One can't have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it.
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In nature there are few sharp lines
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The white sun like a moth on a string circles the southpole.
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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.
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Where but in the very asshole of comedown is redemption: as where but brought low, where but in the grief of failure, loss, error do we discern the savage afflictions that turn us around: where but in the arrangements love crawls us through
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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.
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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.'
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Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed.
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The wonderful workings of the world: wonderful, wonderful: I'm surprised half the time
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Thats a wonderful change thats taken place, and so most poetry today is published, if not directly by the person, certainly by the enterprise of the poet himself, working with his friends.
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A poem generated by its own laws may be unrealized and bad in terms of so-called objective principles of taste, judgement, deduction.
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If the greatest god is the stillness all the motions add up to, then we must ineluctably be included.
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Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without
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Things go away to return, brightened for the passage
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