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,… — 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
