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"21 A. R. Ammons Quotes & Sayings

      American     /    
Born: 18 February 1926. Died: 25 February 2001 | Poet |
Only silence perfects silence.
Silence Perfects Silence
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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.'

Answer Ask Correction Disorder
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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.

Find Identity Keep Mind
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If the greatest god is the stillness all the motions add up to, then we must ineluctably be included.

Add God Greatest Included
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Everything is discursive opinion instead of direct experience.
Direct Everything Experience Instead
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Is it not careless to become too local when there are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone.
Alone Become Billion Careless
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In nature there are few sharp lines.
Few Lines Nature Sharp
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Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values.

Attention Directed Greater Lesser
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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.

Articles Concerning Flood Grateful
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Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without.

Along Every Five Hundred
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Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.
Anything Becomes Closely Looked
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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.

Certain Concrete Large Limited
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Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

Become Blank Definition Other
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Each poem in becoming generates the laws by which it is generated: extensions of the laws to other poems never completely take.

Becoming Each Extensions Laws
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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.

Act Chance Disaster Discovery
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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.

Beings Leads Our Poetry
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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.

Assurance Been Himself Learned
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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.

Certainly Change Directly Enterprise
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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.

Burning Other Past Poem
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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.

Along Cannot Day Each
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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.

Actual Besides Class Differs
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A. R. Ammons Quotes & Sayings