A.R. Ammons Quotes & Sayings

The reeds give
way to the
wind and give
the wind away — A.R. Ammons

What destruction have I been blessed by? — A.R. Ammons

Reflective

I found a
weed
that had a

mirror in it
and that
mirror

looked in at
a mirror
in

me that
had a
weed in it — A.R. Ammons

Not so much looking for the shape
as being available
to any shape that may be
summoning itself
through me
from the self not mine but ours. — A.R. Ammons

One can't have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it. — A.R. Ammons

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterward have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of oversimplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life. Poetry is a verbal means to a nonverbal source. It is a motion to no-motion, to the still point of contemplation and deep realization. — A.R. Ammons

Questions structure and, so, to some extent predetermine answers. — A.R. Ammons

Attend to mushrooms and all other things will answer up. — A.R. Ammons

Where but in the very asshole of comedown is redemption: as where but brought low, where but in the grief of failure, loss, error do we discern the savage afflictions that turn us around: where but in the arrangements love crawls us through — A.R. Ammons

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 ... — A.R. Ammons

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

I've pressed so
far away from
my desire that
if you asked
me what I
want I would,
accepting the harmonious
completion of the
drift, say annihilation,
probably. — A.R. Ammons

Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values. — 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

Things go away to return, brightened for the passage — A.R. Ammons

Equilibrations
If you walk back
and forth
through a puddle pretty
soon
you wet the whole
driveway but of
course dry
the puddle up. — A.R. Ammons

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

Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing. — A.R. Ammons

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

The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry, all that he has learned about poetry, is only a partial assurance. — A.R. Ammons

To be saved is here, local and mortal — A.R. Ammons

You came one day and
as usual in such matters
significance filled everything-
your eyes, the things you
knew, the way you turned,
leaned, stood, or sat,
this way or that. — A.R. Ammons

The oppressed grows weightless: doze/n th/rough c/and/or man/aged leg/ions stud/ents — A.R. Ammons

Plant the seed whose vine or tree may hang you. — A.R. Ammons

The white sun like a moth on a string circles the southpole. — A.R. Ammons

If the greatest god is the stillness all the motions add up to, then we must ineluctably be included. — A.R. Ammons

Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful. — A.R. Ammons

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, to be recognised by burning. — A.R. Ammons

Like the hills under
dusk
you fall away
from the light:
you deepen: the green
light darkens
and you are nearly lost:
only so much light as
stars keep
manifests your face:
I feel the total night
in myself rave
for the light along your lips. — A.R. Ammons

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

Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it, teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition. — A.R. Ammons

There's something to be said in favor of working in isolation in the real world. — A.R. Ammons

The wonderful workings of the world: wonderful,
wonderful: I'm surprised half the time — A.R. Ammons

That's a wonderful change that's 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. — A.R. Ammons

It's not a love of poetry readings that attracts those who do come to them but theater. — A.R. Ammons

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

Though I have looked everywhere / I can find nothing lowly / in the universe. — A.R. Ammons

It was May before my
attention came
to spring and
my word I said
to the southern slopes
I've
missed it, it
came and went before
I got right to see:
don't worry, said the mountain,
try the later northern slopes
or if
you can climb, climb
into spring: but
said the mountain
it's not that way
with all things, some
that go are gone — A.R. Ammons

Is it not careless to become too local when there are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone. — A.R. Ammons

In nature there are few sharp lines. — A.R. Ammons

I take the walk to be the externalization of an interior seeking so that the analogy is first of all between the external and the internal. — A.R. Ammons

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

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. — A.R. Ammons

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. — A.R. Ammons

Everything is discursive opinion instead of direct experience. — A.R. Ammons

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 true, is to be recognized, discovered. — A.R. Ammons

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. — A.R. Ammons

Only silence perfects silence. — A.R. Ammons

For though we often need to be restored to the small, concrete, limited, and certain, we as often need to be reminded of the large, vague, unlimited, unknown. — A.R. Ammons

I have a life that did not become,
that turned aside and stopped,
astonished — A.R. Ammons