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.- A. R. Ammons
There's something to be said in favor of working in isolation in the real world.
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.
That's a wonderful change that is 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.
Questions structure and, so, to some extent predetermine answers.
Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values.
Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed.
Only silence perfects silence.
Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without.
Is it not careless to become too local when there are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone.
In nature there are few sharp lines.
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.'
If the greatest god is the stillness all the motions add up to, then we must ineluctably be included.
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.
I take the walk to be the externalization of an interior seeking so that the analogy is first of all between the external and the internal.
