3 December 2020 A. R. Ammons Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it, teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.
3 December 2020 A. R. Ammons Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed.
3 December 2020 A. R. Ammons Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can’t imagine ourselves living without.
3 December 2020 A. R. Ammons 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.
3 December 2020 A. R. Ammons Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values.
3 December 2020 A. R. Ammons I am grateful for – though I can’t keep up with – the flood of articles, theses, and textbooks that mean to share insight concerning the nature of poetry.
3 December 2020 A. R. Ammons 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.’
3 December 2020 A. R. Ammons That’s a wonderful change that’s taken place, and so most poetry today is published, if not directly by the person, certainly by the enterprise of the poet himself, working with his friends.
3 December 2020 A. R. Ammons Is it not careless to become too local when there are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone.
3 December 2020 A. R. Ammons The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry, all that he has learned about poetry, is only a partial assurance.
