American - Poet | February 18, 1926 - February 25, 2001
Only silence perfects silence.
A. R. Ammons
SilenceOnly
A poem generated by its own laws may be unrealized and bad in terms of so-called objective principles of taste, judgement, deduction.
BadPrinciplesTasteOwnJudgement
In nature there are few sharp lines.
NatureLinesSharpFew
Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values.
ValuePoetryAttentionValuesMore
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.
NatureGratefulI AmPoetryInsight
Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without.
PoetryLivingYearsWithoutImagine
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
SeeingBecomeStructureOutBlank
Each poem in becoming generates the laws by which it is generated: extensions of the laws to other poems never completely take.
NeverTakeBecomingLawsPoemPoems
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.
TimeChanceDiscoveryNewLeadAct
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.
ChangeTodayPoetryFriendsPerson
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.
PastManPurposeYouGoReason
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.
ChangeStressAppreciateMeaning
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