A. R. Ammons
  • Is it not careless to become too local when there are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone.

  • Everything is discursive opinion instead of direct experience.

  • 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.

  • 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.'

  • Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values.