Quotes Archie R. Ammons

A poem generated by its own laws may be unrealized and bad i...

Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful....

Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would s...

Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, b...

Each poem in becoming generates the laws by which it is gene...

Even if you walk exactly the same route each time - as with ...

Everything is discursive opinion instead of direct experienc...

For though we often need to be restored to the small, concre...

I am grateful for - though I can't keep up with - the flood ...

I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or wha...

I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, orde...

I take the walk to be the externalization of an interior see...

If a poem is each time new, then it is necessarily an act of...

If the greatest god is the stillness all the motions add up ...

If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we ex...

In nature there are few sharp lines....

Is it not careless to become too local when there are four h...

Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement abo...

Only silence perfects silence....

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, t...

Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, ...

Questions structure and, so, to some extent predetermine ans...

That's a wonderful change that's taken place, and so most po...

The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said...

There's something to be said in favor of working in isolatio...