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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

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
Certain
Vague
Need
Concrete
Needs
Unknown
Limited
Large
Small
Restored
Though
Reminded
Often
Unlimited

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I have a life that did not become, that turned aside and stopped, astonished
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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.
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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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It's not a love of poetry readings that attracts those who do come to them but theater.
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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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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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What destruction have I been blessed by?
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Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values
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There's something to be said in favor of working in isolation in the real world.
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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.
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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 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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The white sun like a moth on a string circles the southpole.
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Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.
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The wonderful workings of the world: wonderful, wonderful: I'm surprised half the time
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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.
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Attend to mushrooms and all other things will answer up.
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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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Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
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Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without
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