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 Copy Share Image
Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater… — A. R. Ammons Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
It's not a love of poetry readings that attracts those who do come to them but theater. — A. R. Ammons Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I am grateful for - though I can't keep up with - the flood of articles, theses, and textbooks that mean to… — A. R. Ammons Copy Share Image
The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry, all that he has learned about poetry, is… — A. R. Ammons Copy Share Image
Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can… — A. R. Ammons Copy Share Image
Even if you walk exactly the same route each time - as with a sonnet - the events along the route cannot… — A. R. Ammons Copy Share Image
I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man.… — A. R. Ammons Copy Share Image
That's a wonderful change that's taken place, and so most poetry today is published, if not directly by the person, certainly by… — A. R. Ammons Copy Share Image
If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music… — A. R. Ammons Copy Share Image
If a poem is each time new, then it is necessarily an act of discovery, a chance taken, a chance that may… — A. R. Ammons Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
With the first step, the number of shapes the walk might take is infinite, but then the walk begins to define itself as it… — A. R. Ammons Copy Share Image
The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry, all that he has learned about poetry, is only a… — A. R. Ammons Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The wonderful workings of the world: wonderful, wonderful: I'm surprised half the time — A. R. Ammons Copy Share Image
Though I have looked everywhere / I can find nothing lowly / in the universe. — A. R. Ammons Copy Share Image
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing. — A. R. Ammons Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
