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"Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed."
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"For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming."

"Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry."

"From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be."

"In the grueling light that passed for day..."

"Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine art; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach true excellence."

"The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee."
Explore more quotes by 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."


"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."


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


"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."


"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."
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