A. R. Ammons
A. R. Ammons
Archie Randolph Ammonswas an American poet who won the annual National Book Award for Poetry in 1973 and 1993...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth18 February 1926
CountryUnited States of America
law becoming extensions
Each poem in becoming generates the laws by which it is generated: extensions of the laws to other poems never completely take.
answers disorder what-is-poetry
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.'
vision definitions way
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
law objectivity judgement
A poem generated by its own laws may be unrealized and bad in terms of so-called objective principles of taste, judgement, deduction.
stars four hundred
Is it not careless to become too local when there are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone.
risk poet said
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.
experience opinion direct
Everything is discursive opinion instead of direct experience.
acceptance lines boundaries
I have reached no conclusions, have erected no boundaries, shutting out and shutting in, separating inside from outside: I have drawn no lines
attention results greater
Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values
needs unlimited certain
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
years imagine hundred
Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without
taken today wonderful
Thats a wonderful change thats 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.
add ifs stillness
If the greatest god is the stillness all the motions add up to, then we must ineluctably be included.
grief loss errors
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