Meditative, comic, emotionally wrenching, steeped in both the natural
world and the life of the mind, the poetry of A. R. Ammons is at once
cosmic in scope and intimate in its moment-to-moment transformations.
With his mastery of description and cadence, his roiling wit and
fearless gaze, Ammons was a philosopher of the everyday who found
surprise everywhere he looked. "He is often witty, sometimes bawdy,"
writes editor David Lehman, "on a perpetual quest to find forms
capacious enough for an imagination intent on finding a place for
everything."
A compound, in editor David Lehman's words, of "wisdom, pathos, humor,
mortal longing, and intimations of immortality," the work of A. R.
Ammons is like nothing else in modern American poetry. Ammons's tireless
formal invention and restless curiosity about every aspect of nature and
of the mind are embodied in poetry that is effortlessly accessible and
generous in its impulses. Whether spreading out in the long forms of
Tape for the Turn of the Year or Garbage, or honing his perceptions
down to the extreme brevity of his shorter lyrics, he holds tight to his
vision of the way "all day / life itself is bending, / weaving,
changing, / adapting, failing, / succeeding."
This new selection covering the whole range of Ammons's career offers a
superb introduction to the pleasures and surprises of his work. His
uncanny ability to balance wide-ranging abstract speculation with
meticulous observation of natural phenomena, in poetry that encompasses
moods of tragic pathos, low comedy, and seemingly casual profundity
marks him as one of the preeminent figures in our recent literature.
About the American Poets Project
Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and
textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the
full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and
introduced by today's most discerning poets and critics.
