[Walsh:] Is it your loneliness you’re writing about?
[Ammons:] Yes it is. I really don’t write to an audience. I never imagined an audience. I imagine other lonely people, such as myself. I don’t know who they are or where they are, and I don’t care, but they’re the people whom I want to reach. It seems to me that the people who are capable of forming themselves into groups and audiences have something else to go on besides poetry. So let them go ahead. It could be political, sociological, mystical, or whatever. They’re welcome to it and I hope they do a good job, but I am not part of that. I’m really an isolationist. And I know there are others like me. There is some element of ultimate loneliness in each person. In some people it’s a crisis. Those are the pieces of loneliness I would like to share at this distance.