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. A. R. Ammons Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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. A. R. Ammons Read Quote
I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change. A. R. Ammons Read Quote
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. A. R. Ammons Read Quote
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. A. R. Ammons Read Quote
Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. A. R. Ammons Read Quote
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. A. R. Ammons Read Quote
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing. A. R. Ammons Read Quote
For though we often need to be restored to the small, concrete, limited, and certain, we as often need to be reminded of the large, vague, unlimited, unknown. A. R. Ammons Read Quote
