Carolina QuotesUnless I have something already moving through the mind, I don’t go to the typewriter at all. The world has so many poems in it, it has never seemed to me very smart to force one more upon the world. If there isn’t one there to write, you just leave it alone.
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
“Unless I have something already moving through the mind, I d…” Archie Randolph Ammons. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-EA52649C86. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/ea52649c86
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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.