A.R. Ammons

“You came one day andas usual in such matterssignificance filled everything-your eyes, the things youknew, the way you turned,leaned, stood, or sat,this way or that.”

“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.”

“One can't have itboth ways and bothways is the onlyway I want it.”

“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”

“The reeds giveway to thewind and givethe wind away”

“It was May before myattention cameto spring andmy word I saidto the southern slopesI'vemissed it, itcame and went beforeI got right to see:don't worry, said the mountain,try the later northern slopesor ifyou can climb, climbinto spring: butsaid the mountainit's not that waywith all things, somethat go are gone”

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

“The oppressed grows weightless: doze/n th/rough c/and/or man/aged leg/ions stud/ents”

“To be saved is here, local and mortal”

“EquilibrationsIf you walk backand forththrough a puddle prettysoonyou wet the wholedriveway but ofcourse drythe puddle up.”

“ReflectiveI found aweedthat had amirror in itand thatmirrorlooked in ata mirrorinme thathad a weed in it”

“What destruction have I been blessed by?”

“not so much looking for the shapeas being availableto any shape that may besummoning itselfthrough mefrom the self not mine but ours.”

“Plant the seed whose vine or tree may hang you.”