Writer First poet Nature American I take the walk to be the externalization of an interior seeking so that the analogy is first of all between the external and the internal. - A. R. Ammons
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing. - A. R. Ammons
Change 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. - A. R. Ammons
Poetry First 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. - A. R. Ammons
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. - A. R. Ammons
Thoughts Time 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. - A. R. Ammons
And History will smile to think that this is the species for which Socrates and Jesus Christ died. - Julien Benda
Bereavement is the sharpest challenge to our trust in God; if faith can overcome this, there is no mountain which it cannot remove. - Dean Inge