A. R. Ammons - Poem Quotes

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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

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

I don't know about you, but I'm sick of good poems, all those little rondures splendidly brought off, painted gourds on a shelf.

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 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

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