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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

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
Lead
Taken
Chance
May
Fulfillment
Time
Poem
Disaster
Necessarily
Discovery

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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 the greatest god is the stillness all the motions add up to, then we must ineluctably be included.
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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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Only silence perfects silence.
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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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The white sun like a moth on a string circles the southpole.
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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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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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Everything is discursive opinion instead of direct experience.
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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.
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The wonderful workings of the world: wonderful, wonderful: I'm surprised half the time
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I have a life that did not become, that turned aside and stopped, astonished
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In nature there are few sharp lines
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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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One can't have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it.
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Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.
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Things go away to return, brightened for the passage
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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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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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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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