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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
Unknown
Unstructured
Leads
Plenitude
Rational
Refreshed
Beings
Structured
Poetry
Selves
Return
Returns
Source
Self
Sources
More quotes by A. R. Ammons
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
I have a life that did not become, that turned aside and stopped, astonished
A. R. Ammons
If the greatest god is the stillness all the motions add up to, then we must ineluctably be included.
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
There's something to be said in favor of working in isolation in the real world.
A. R. Ammons
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
Things go away to return, brightened for the passage
A. R. Ammons
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
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
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.
A. R. Ammons
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
The white sun like a moth on a string circles the southpole.
A. R. Ammons
The wonderful workings of the world: wonderful, wonderful: I'm surprised half the time
A. R. Ammons
Everything is discursive opinion instead of direct experience.
A. R. Ammons
To be saved is here, local and mortal
A. R. Ammons
In nature there are few sharp lines
A. R. Ammons
Only silence perfects silence.
A. R. Ammons
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
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
One can't have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it.
A. R. Ammons
