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.' — 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 goes along, though freedom remains total with each step: any tempting side road can be turned into an impulse, or any wild patch of woods can be explored. The pattern of the walk is to come… — A. R. Ammons Copy Share
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
