#poe

Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without. ↗

— A. R. Ammons

#along #comes #every #five #hundred

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. ↗

— A. R. Ammons

#leads #our #poetry #rational #refreshed

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

#ask #correction #disorder #expect #linguistic

A poem generated by its own laws may be unrealized and bad in terms of so-called objective principles of taste, judgement, deduction. ↗

— A. R. Ammons

#deduction #generated #judgement #laws #may

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

#anticipations #cannot #day #day to day #each

"Therefore" is a word the poet must not know. ↗

— Andre Gide

#know #must #poet #therefore #word

I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do. ↗

— David Antin

#hard #hardly #how #i #imagine

I didn't think about whether I was writing poems. I was thinking. And the more I was thinking, the more there was I didn't understand. ↗

— David Antin

#i #more #poems #think #thinking

I was very committed to the process of composing, working at poems, putting things together and taking them apart like some kind of experimental filmmaker. ↗

— David Antin

#committed #composing #experimental #filmmaker #i

The ancient Greek oral poets all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the Muse to help them remember. ↗

— David Antin

#always #ancient #anxiety #began #deficiencies