A. R. Ammons Quotes

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

The rules or 'laws' of poetry are only tentative devices, an approximate scheme. There is no Sinaitic recipe for poetry, for the individual poem is the norm.

I'm not one who divides music, dance or art into various categories. Either something works, or it doesn't.

If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry.

The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.

Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.

When I discovered the lyric poem, that advanced not by narrative steps but by blocks and layers of imagery, I said, 'Gee, I probably could do that. So let me try that.'

We are not being true to the artist as a man if we consider his art work junk simply because we differ with his outlook on life. Christian schools, Christian parents, and Christian pastors often have turned off young people at just this point. Because the schools, the pastors, and the parents did not make a distinction between technical excellence and content, the whole of much great art has been rejected with scorn and ridicule. Instead, if the artist's technical excellence is high, he is to be praised for this, even if we differ with his world view. Man must be treated fairly as man.

I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art.

Working alone on a poem, a poet is of all artists the most free. The poem can be written with a modicum of technology, and can be published, in most cases, quite cheaply.

However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it.

Till now poets were privileged to insert a certain proportion of nonsense - very far in excess of one-half of one per cent - into their otherwise sober documents.

Well, I like to write poetry. I'm a published poet.

I don't think there's any formula for what makes great art.

A poet's cultural baggage and erudition can interfere with a poem.

We have no other means of recognising a work of art than our feeling for it.

No bad man can be a good poet.

The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry.

I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.

Art is always good. It just depends if you like or not.

I've read some of your modern free verse and wonder who set it free.

If your choice enters into it, then taste is involved - bad taste, good taste, uninteresting taste. Taste is the enemy of art, A-R-T.

I would admit that poetry is something more than mere communication and that if that 'something more' could be abstracted from the whole, it might well prove to be that which makes the whole a poem.

There are so many reactions to art that make sense to me - but 'ick' means something.

Poetry is a pure meritocracy. There's no room for ambiguity: either a poem moves you and opens up new vistas in life, or it doesn't. It's completely objective, and the best always rise to the top.