Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Firsts
Interior
First
Interiors
Take
Internals
Internal
External
Seeking
Walk
Analogy
Walks
Analogies

More quotes by A. R. Ammons

Image
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
Image
The wonderful workings of the world: wonderful, wonderful: I'm surprised half the time
A. R. Ammons
Image
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
Image
The white sun like a moth on a string circles the southpole.
A. R. Ammons
Image
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
Image
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.
A. R. Ammons
Image
What destruction have I been blessed by?
A. R. Ammons
Image
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
Image
Things go away to return, brightened for the passage
A. R. Ammons
Image
I have a life that did not become, that turned aside and stopped, astonished
A. R. Ammons
Image
I have reached no conclusions, have erected no boundaries, shutting out and shutting in, separating inside from outside: I have drawn no lines
A. R. Ammons
Image
Is it not careless to become too local when there are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone.
A. R. Ammons
Image
One can't have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it.
A. R. Ammons
Image
If the greatest god is the stillness all the motions add up to, then we must ineluctably be included.
A. R. Ammons
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It's not a love of poetry readings that attracts those who do come to them but theater.
A. R. Ammons
Image
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
Image
Everything is discursive opinion instead of direct experience.
A. R. Ammons
Image
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
A. R. Ammons