A.R. Ammons > Quotes

“Things go away to return, brightened for the passage”
― A.R. Ammons, Sphere: The Form of a Motion

“One can't
have it

both ways
and both

ways is
the only

way I
want it.”
― A.R. Ammons

“What destruction have I been blessed by?”
― A.R. Ammons

“not so much looking for the shape
as being available
to any shape that may be
summoning itself
through me
from the self not mine but ours.”
― A.R. Ammons, Collected Poems, 1951-1971

“The reeds give
way to the

wind and give
the wind away”
― A.R. Ammons, The Selected Poems

“Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterward have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of oversimplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life. Poetry is a verbal means to a nonverbal source. It is a motion to no-motion, to the still point of contemplation and deep realization.”
― A.R. Ammons

“I’ve pressed so
far away from
my desire that

if you asked
me what I
want I would,

accepting the harmonious
completion of the
drift, say annihilation,

probably.”
― A.R. Ammons, Brink Road

“To be saved is here, local and mortal”
― A.R. Ammons

“Plant the seed whose vine or tree may hang you.”
― A.R. Ammons

“You came one day and
as usual in such matters
significance filled everything-
your eyes, the things you
knew, the way you turned,
leaned, stood, or sat,
this way or that.”
― A.R. Ammons

“It was May before my
attention came
to spring and

my word I said
to the southern slopes
I've

missed it, it
came and went before
I got right to see:

don't worry, said the mountain,
try the later northern slopes
or if

you can climb, climb
into spring: but
said the mountain

it's not that way
with all things, some
that go are gone”
― A.R. Ammons, The Selected Poems

“Reflective

I found a
weed
that had a

mirror in it
and that
mirror

looked in at
a mirror
in

me that
had a
weed in it”
― A.R. Ammons, The Really Short Poems

“Where but in the very asshole of comedown is redemption: as where but brought low, where but in the grief of failure, loss, error do we discern the savage afflictions that turn us around: where but in the arrangements love crawls us through”
― A.R. Ammons, Garbage

“The oppressed grows weightless: doze/n th/rough c/and/or man/aged leg/ions stud/ents”
― A.R. Ammons, Sphere: The Form of a Motion

“I have a life that did not become,
that turned aside and stopped,
astonished:
I hold it in me like a pregnancy or
as on my lap a child
not to grow or grow old but dwell on”
― A.R. Ammons

“Equilibrations

If you walk back
and forth

through a puddle pretty
soon

you wet the whole
driveway but of

course dry
the puddle up.”
― A.R. Ammons, The Really Short Poems

“I’ve given
you my
emptiness: it may
not be unlike
your emptiness:
in voyages, there
are wide reaches
of water
with no islands:”
― A. R. Ammons

“Bees die with the burnt honey at their mouths, at least.”
― A.R. Ammons

“Like the hills under
dusk
you fall away
from the light:

you deepen: the green
light darkens
and you are nearly lost:

only so much light as
stars keep
manifests your face:

I feel the total night
in myself rave
for the light along your lips.”
― A.R. Ammons, The Selected Poems

“the way I could tell
today
that yesterday is dead
is that
the little gray bird
that sat
in the empty
tree
yesterday is gone:
yesterday and
bird are gone:
I know there's no use
to look
for either of them, bird
running from winter,
yesterday
running downstream
to some ocean-pocket of
rest
whence it may sometime
come again (changed), new
as tomorrow:
how like a gift
the memory
of bird and empty tree!
how
precious
since we may not have
that configuration
again:
today is full of things,
so many,
how can they be managed,
received and loved
in their passing?”
― A.R. Ammons

“You came one day and
as usual in such matters
significance filled everything -
your eyes, the things you
knew, the way you turned,
leaned, stood, or sat,
this way or that: when
you left, the area around here rose
a tilted tide, and everything that
offers desolation drained away.”
― A.R. Ammons

“أسرع طريقة لتغيير العالم، هي أن نحبه كما هو .”
― A.R. Ammons, الوريقات تطير من الأشجار كالعصافير

“in art, we do not run
to keep up with random
moments, we select
& create
the moment
occurring forever:”
― A.R. Ammons, Tape for the Turn of the Year

“intellections have a use,
don't think they don't:
if the vine couldn't
find a natural tree, what
would become of it? if
structure without life is
meaningless, so is
life without structure:
we're going to make a
dense, tangled trellis so
lovely & complicated that
every kind of variety will
find a place in it or on
it: you just be
surprised: &
forgive us:
who mean song
direct & fierce:”
― A.R. Ammons, Tape for the Turn of the Year

“Where I am going, nothing of me will remain: yet, I'll drift through the voices of coyotes, drip into florets by a mountain rock.”
― A.R. Ammons

“الكون في حدّ ذاته
هو نصب الحب التذكاري
كل جرف، كل مرتفع صخري
قد بدّد نفسه في ضوء الحب
يبقى هنا
حتى يشعله الحبُّ ثانيةً فيحرّره؛
معظم الكون نجومٌ ميتة، "
لكن أنظر إلى الضوء
ما زال يتدفق... في فضاءات ألفيّة”
― A.R. Ammons, الوريقات تطير من الأشجار كالعصافير

“I allow myself eddies of meaning:
yield to a direction of significance
running
like a stream through the geography of my work:
you can find
in my sayings
swerves of action
like the inlet’s cutting edge:
there are dunes of motion,
organizations of grass, white sandy paths
or remembrance
in the overall wandering of mirroring mind:

but Overall is beyond me

— A.R. Ammons, from “Corsons Inlet,” Collected Poems: 1951-1971 (W. W. Norton & Co., 1972)”
― A.R. Ammons, Collected Poems, 1951-1971

“I can’t tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other. The reason I can’t tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognized by burning.

from "A Poem is a Walk," Epoch 18 (Fall 1968): 114-19.”
― A.R. Ammons

“Flux has heightened us into knots of staid tension.”
― A.R. Ammons

“الفن ثمرة اشجار الالم التى تنمو فى حقول حياه لم تعش”
― A.R. Ammons, الوريقات تطير من الأشجار كالعصافير