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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
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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
Men
Poem
Burning
Telling
Purpose
Comes
Tell
Past
Reason
Recognised
More quotes by A. R. Ammons
The white sun like a moth on a string circles the southpole.
A. R. Ammons
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
I have a life that did not become, that turned aside and stopped, astonished
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
Only silence perfects silence.
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
It's not a love of poetry readings that attracts those who do come to them but theater.
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 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
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
Things go away to return, brightened for the passage
A. R. Ammons
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
One can't have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it.
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
To be saved is here, local and mortal
A. R. Ammons
Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.
A. R. Ammons
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
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
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
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
