A.R. Ammons Quotes

Archie Randolph Ammons was an American poet who won the annual National Book Award for Poetry in 1973 and 1993. Wikipedia  

✵ 18. February 1926 – 25. February 2001
A.R. Ammons: 17   quotes 0   likes

Famous A.R. Ammons Quotes

“Things go away to return, brightened for the passage”

Source: Sphere: The Form of a Motion

“MIRRORMENT
Birds are flowers flying
and flowers perched birds.”

The Really Short Poems of A. R. Ammons (1991)

“THEIR SEX LIFE
One failure on
top of another”

The Really Short Poems of A. R. Ammons (1991)

“CALLING
Wind rocks
the porch chair

somebody home.”

The Really Short Poems of A. R. Ammons (1991)

“Trying to make a living from poetry is like putting chains on butterfly wings.”

Paris Review interview (1996)

A.R. Ammons Quotes about the trip

“SMALL SONG
The reeds give way to the wind
and give the wind away”

The Really Short Poems of A. R. Ammons (1991)

A.R. Ammons Quotes about the world

“I write for love, respect, money, fame, honor, redemption. I write to be included in a world I feel rejected by.”

Paris Review interview (1996)
Context: I write for love, respect, money, fame, honor, redemption. I write to be included in a world I feel rejected by. But I don’t want to be included by surrendering myself to expectations. I want to buy my admission to others by engaging their interests and feelings, doing the least possible damage to my feelings and interests but changing theirs a bit. I think I was not aware early on of those things. I wrote early on because it was there to do and because if anything good happened in the poem I felt good. Poems are experiences as well as whatever else they are, and for me now, nothing, not respect, honor, money, seems as supportive as just having produced a body of work, which I hope is, all considered, good.

“The world has so many poems in it, it has never seemed to me very smart to force one more upon the world. If there isn’t one there to write, you just leave it alone.”

Paris Review interview (1996)
Context: Unless I have something already moving through the mind, I don’t go to the typewriter at all. The world has so many poems in it, it has never seemed to me very smart to force one more upon the world. If there isn’t one there to write, you just leave it alone.

A.R. Ammons Quotes

“Poems are experiences as well as whatever else they are, and for me now, nothing, not respect, honor, money, seems as supportive as just having produced a body of work, which I hope is, all considered, good.”

Paris Review interview (1996)
Context: I write for love, respect, money, fame, honor, redemption. I write to be included in a world I feel rejected by. But I don’t want to be included by surrendering myself to expectations. I want to buy my admission to others by engaging their interests and feelings, doing the least possible damage to my feelings and interests but changing theirs a bit. I think I was not aware early on of those things. I wrote early on because it was there to do and because if anything good happened in the poem I felt good. Poems are experiences as well as whatever else they are, and for me now, nothing, not respect, honor, money, seems as supportive as just having produced a body of work, which I hope is, all considered, good.

“I write the whole poem at one sitting and then come back to it from time to time over the months or years and rework it.”

Paris Review interview (1996)
Context: I’ve always been highly energized and have written poems in spurts. From the god-given first line right through the poem. And I don’t write two or three lines and then come back the next day and write two or three more; I write the whole poem at one sitting and then come back to it from time to time over the months or years and rework it.

“Somewhere along the line, I don’t know just when, it seems to me I was able to manage the multifariousness of things and the unity of things so much more easily than I ever had before.”

Paris Review interview (1996)
Context: Somewhere along the line, I don’t know just when, it seems to me I was able to manage the multifariousness of things and the unity of things so much more easily than I ever had before. I saw a continuous movement between the highest aspects of unity and the multiplicity of things, and it seemed to function so beautifully that I felt I could turn to any subject matter and know how to deal with it. I would know that there would be isolated facts and perceptions, that it would be possible to arrange them into propositions, and that these propositions could be included under a higher category of things — so that at some point there might be an almost contentless unity at the top of that sort of hierarchy. I feel that you don’t have to know everything to be a master of knowing, but you learn these procedures and then you can turn them toward any subject matter and they come out about the same. I don’t know when I saw for myself the mechanism of how it worked for me. Perhaps it was when I stopped using the word salient so much and began to use the word wikt:suasion.

“I revise short poems sometimes for years, whereas, since there is no getting lost in the long poem, I engage whatever comes up in the moment and link it with its moment.”

Paris Review interview (1996)
Context: In the long poem, if there is a single governing image at the center, then anything can fit around it, meanwhile allowing for a lot of fragmentation and discontinuity on the periphery. Short poems, for me, are coherences, single instances on the periphery of a nonspecified center. I revise short poems sometimes for years, whereas, since there is no getting lost in the long poem, I engage whatever comes up in the moment and link it with its moment.

Similar authors

Robert Frost photo
Robert Frost 265
American poet
Christopher Morley photo
Christopher Morley 30
American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet
Allen Ginsberg photo
Allen Ginsberg 76
American poet
Maya Angelou photo
Maya Angelou 247
American author and poet
Joseph Brodsky photo
Joseph Brodsky 17
Russian and American poet and Nobel Prize for Literature la…
Giorgos Seferis photo
Giorgos Seferis 2
Greek poet and diplomat
Guillaume Apollinaire photo
Guillaume Apollinaire 28
French poet
Gabriela Mistral photo
Gabriela Mistral 2
Chilean poet-diplomat, writer, educator and feminist.
Ezra Pound photo
Ezra Pound 68
American Imagist poet and critic
Seamus Heaney photo
Seamus Heaney 29
Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer