Carolina Quotes[On inspiration]: I think it comes from anxiety. That is to say, either the mind or the body is already rather highly charged and in need of some kind of expression, some way to crystallize and relieve the pressure. And it seems to me that if you’re in that condition and an idea, an insight, an association occurs to you, then that energy is released through the expression of that insight or idea, and after the poem is written, you feel a certain resolution and calmness. Well, I won’t say a “momentary stay against confusion” (Robert Frost’s phrase) but that’s what I mean. I think it comes from that. You know, Bloom says somewhere that poetry is anxiety.
Archie Randolph Ammons Carolinian
Source
No citation is recorded for this quotation.
- form
- interview
- work
- Paris Review interview (1996)
- year
- 1996
no citation recorded
Cite this record
“[On inspiration]: I think it comes from anxiety. That is to …” Archie Randolph Ammons. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-74089E4C4F. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/74089e4c4f
More from Archie Randolph Ammons
SMALL SONG The reeds give way to the wind and give the wind away
I write for love, respect, money, fame, honor, redemption. I write to be included in a world I feel rejected by. But I don’t want to be included by surrendering myself to expectations. I want to buy my admission to others by engaging their interests and feelings, doing the least possible damage to my feelings and interests but changing theirs a bit. I think I was not aware early on of those things. I wrote early on because it was there to do and because if anything good happened in the poem I felt good. Poems are experiences as well as whatever else they are, and for me now, nothing, not respect, honor, money, seems as supportive as just having produced a body of work, which I hope is, all considered, good.
Poetry is everlasting. It is not going away. But it has never occupied a sizeable part of the world's business, and it never will.