Writer Music poet Nature American 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.' - A. R. Ammons
Stars Is it not careless to become too local when there are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone. - A. R. Ammons
Identity Mind 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. - A. R. Ammons
Nature 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. - 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
First 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
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
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