Poetics

Portrait of A.R. Ammons
A.R. Ammons 1926–2001

I look for the way things will turn out spiralling from a center, the shape things will take to come forth in

so that the birch tree white touched black at branches will stand out wind-glittering totally its apparent self:

I look for the forms things want to come as

from what black wells of possibility, how a thing will unfold:

not the shape on paper -- though that, too -- but the uninterfering means on paper:

not so much looking for the shape as being available to any shape that may be summoning itself through me from the self not mine but ours.

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