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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
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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
Identity
Wisdom
Keep
Find
Mind
Life
More quotes by A. R. Ammons
Only silence perfects silence.
A. R. Ammons
Things go away to return, brightened for the passage
A. R. Ammons
Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.
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
To be saved is here, local and mortal
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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
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
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
In nature there are few sharp lines
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
A. R. Ammons
What destruction have I been blessed by?
A. R. Ammons
One can't have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it.
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
