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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.

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
Poetry
Structured
Return
Selves
Source
Returns
Self
Sources
Unknown
Leads
Unstructured
Rational
Plenitude
Beings
Refreshed

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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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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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Everything is discursive opinion instead of direct experience.
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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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What destruction have I been blessed by?
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Attend to mushrooms and all other things will answer up.
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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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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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I have a life that did not become, that turned aside and stopped, astonished
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The wonderful workings of the world: wonderful, wonderful: I'm surprised half the time
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Though I have looked everywhere / I can find nothing lowly / in the universe.
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To be saved is here, local and mortal
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The walk liberating, I was released from forms, from the perpendiculars, straight lines, blocks, boxes, binds of thought into the hues, shadings, rises, flowing bends and blends of sight.
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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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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
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I have reached no conclusions, have erected no boundaries, shutting out and shutting in, separating inside from outside: I have drawn no lines
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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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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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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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