I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning.

A. R. Ammons

Any Burning Go Man Nor Other Past Poem Purpose Reason Recognised Tell Telling Where You

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Each poem in becoming generates the laws by which it is generated: extensions of the laws to other poems never completely take.

— A. R. Ammons

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

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If a poem is each time new, then it is necessarily an act of discovery, a chance taken, a chance that may lead to fulfillment or disaster.

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Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

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You have your identity when you find out, not what you can keep your mind on, but what you can't keep your mind off.

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