Judgement Quote by 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

“A poem is a fictional, verbally inventive moral statement in which it is the author, rather than the printer or word processor, who decides…

— Terry Eagleton

Poetry; a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.

— Matthew Arnold

As a guiding principle I believe that every poem must be its own sole freshly created universe, and therefore have no belief n 'tradition'…

— Philip Larkin

“Poetry by its very nature is subversive . . . It turns words inside out, confounds meaning, changes black and white to ambiguous shades…

— Cristina Garcia

“My stupidity gave its blessing to succouring nature, on her knees before God. What I am (my drunken laughter and happiness) is nonetheless at…

— Georges Bataille

A poem may be an instance of morality, of social conditions, of psychological history; it may instance all its qualities, but never one of…

— Allen Tate

Poetry requires deliberate movement in its direction, a filament of faith in its persistence, receptivity to its fundamental worthwhileness. Within its unanesthetized heart there…

— C.D. Wright

“She was learning to treat laws as most people treat poems, making them mean whatever she wanted them to without reference to the author's…

— Jane Rule

Poetry has its own laws speaking for the life of the planet. It is a language that wants to bring back together what the…

— Linda Hogan

When poems are no good they don't make any sense.

— Derek Walcott

“But my research had taught me that the tissue of contradictions that was my personality was itself, at best, a poem, where “poem” is…

— Ben Lerner