I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning.

Quote by A. R. Ammons

The colon is an Ammons "signature"; he uses it "as an all-purpose punctuation mark. Corsons Inlet. Lehman has written that Ammons "bears out T.

He wrote about humanity's relationship to nature in alternately comic and solemn tones.