Ar Ammons Quotes

Things go away to return, brightened for the passage

One can't have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it.

What destruction have I been blessed by?

The reeds give way to the wind and give the wind away

not so much looking for the shape as being available to any shape that may be summoning itself through me from the self not mine but ours.

I’ve pressed so far away from my desire that if you asked me what I want I would, accepting the harmonious completion of the drift, say annihilation, probably.

To be saved is here, local and mortal

You came one day and as usual in such matters significance filled everything- your eyes, the things you knew, the way you turned, leaned, stood, or sat, this way or that.

Plant the seed whose vine or tree may hang you.

Reflective I found a weed that had a mirror in it and that mirror looked in at a mirror in me that had a weed in 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

I have a life that did not become, that turned aside and stopped, astonished: I hold it in me like a pregnancy or as on my lap a child not to grow or grow old but dwell on

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

It was May before my attention came to spring and my word I said to the southern slopes I've missed it, it came and went before I got right to see: don't worry, said the mountain, try the later northern slopes or if you can climb, climb into spring: but said the mountain it's not that way with all things, some that go are gone

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.

Equilibrations If you walk back and forth through a puddle pretty soon you wet the whole driveway but of course dry the puddle up.

Bees die with the burnt honey at their mouths, at least.

Like the hills under dusk you fall away from the light: you deepen: the green light darkens and you are nearly lost: only so much light as stars keep manifests your face: I feel the total night in myself rave for the light along your lips.

Flux has heightened us into knots of staid tension.

Where I am going, nothing of me will remain: yet, I'll drift through the voices of coyotes, drip into florets by a mountain rock.

أسرع طريقة لتغيير العالم، هي أن نحبه كما هو .

in art, we do not run to keep up with random moments, we select & create the moment occurring forever:

الكون في حدّ ذاته هو نصب الحب التذكاري كل جرف، كل مرتفع صخري قد بدّد نفسه في ضوء الحب يبقى هنا حتى يشعله الحبُّ ثانيةً فيحرّره؛ معظم الكون نجومٌ ميتة، " لكن أنظر إلى الضوء ما زال يتدفق... في فضاءات ألفيّة

I can’t tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other. The reason I can’t tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognized by burning. from "A Poem is a Walk," Epoch 18 (Fall 1968): 114-19.

You came one day and as usual in such matters significance filled everything - your eyes, the things you knew, the way you turned, leaned, stood, or sat, this way or that: when you left, the area around here rose a tilted tide, and everything that offers desolation drained away.

the way I could tell today that yesterday is dead is that the little gray bird that sat in the empty tree yesterday is gone: yesterday and bird are gone: I know there's no use to look for either of them, bird running from winter, yesterday running downstream to some ocean-pocket of rest whence it may sometime come again (changed), new as tomorrow: how like a gift the memory of bird and empty tree! how precious since we may not have that configuration again: today is full of things, so many, how can they be managed, received and loved in their passing?

intellections have a use, don't think they don't: if the vine couldn't find a natural tree, what would become of it? if structure without life is meaningless, so is life without structure: we're going to make a dense, tangled trellis so lovely & complicated that every kind of variety will find a place in it or on it: you just be surprised: & forgive us: who mean song direct & fierce:

I allow myself eddies of meaning: yield to a direction of significance running like a stream through the geography of my work: you can find in my sayings swerves of action like the inlet’s cutting edge: there are dunes of motion, organizations of grass, white sandy paths or remembrance in the overall wandering of mirroring mind: but Overall is beyond me — A.R. Ammons, from “Corsons Inlet,” Collected Poems: 1951-1971 (W. W. Norton & Co., 1972)

when you consider that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen, each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then the heart moves roomier

Flux heightens is into knots of staid tension.

You are everywhere partial and entire. You are on the inside of everything and on the outside.

You are everywhere partial and entire You are on the inside of everything and on the outside

The reeds give way to the wind and give the wind away.

بين الزمن و الهاوية، عند مفترق زمن يجري و آخر عالق بين أزمنة أخرى، يمضي زمن غير مرئي، يمضي حجرًا، أو طبقات وجود في الوجود، أو أزمنة في زمن و لا شيء عندئذ يبدو ضائعًا

عندما لا يضيّع المرء شيئًا .. يضيع كل شيء .

... لأنك مهما كُنت منيعًا في قلب الدائرة فهشًا تظل حتى يمكنك أخيرًا العيش في اتجاه بسيط واحد، حتى يمكنك أن تتشظّى في كسور الآخرين بينما لا تنظر إلا قدمًا ، و من حين لآخر تلقي نظرة للوراء.

أيسعنا من اللامبالاة حزم ما يكفي من التوق لنحفر الخلاء المعتم

ذاهبٌ للقائك هذه الليلة العصافيرُ التي تحفظ عنوانك طليقة الآن تحت أضلعي، عيناكِ تطيران إليّ، إلى عينِ عقلي و أتخيّل: ماذا لو تجلّدتُ حين مرآكِ ماذا لو احترقتُ كلّي يمكن للعصافير أن تنفلت و تذهب باكرًا جدًا لكن أسوأ الاحتمالات أن تبكّر نفسي في الذهاب إليك و لا أستطيع اللحاق بهما.

أرخيتُ المِعولَ المكسور و في حمأةِ الإحباط من الفشل هاجمتُ حجرَ الوقت ، بالـ دموع صمد الحجر لكنّ الدموع ليّنت حجرَ مُكابدتي.

anybody doesn't believe in reality should try to start a dead car on a 10-degree morning:

الافكار تعبر معظم الرؤوس من دون ان تلتقط شيئا او تخلف اثرا

لم تكن علاقتي بالعالم طيبة في البداية لم يكن لديّ شيء مما يريده العالم ثم لم يكن لدى العالم شيء مما أريد.

الفن ثمرة اشجار الالم التى تنمو فى حقول حياه لم تعش