"If you will sit with me in the light // of speech, I will sit with you.
. . ." Readers who accept that invitation will find themselves in
extraordinary company. The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons, Volume II
presents the second half of Archie Randolph Ammons's long career,
including the complete texts of his two book-length poems from that
period: Garbage, for which he won his second National Book Award, and
Glare, which drew special praise from the Academy of American Poets as
it bestowed on him its highest honor, the Wallace Stevens Award. In
addition, two appendices offer over one hundred and twenty previously
uncollected poems dating from the 1950s to the late 1990s.
Among this volume's many highlights are celebrations of the natural
world (such as "Hermit Lark" and "Lofty Calling"), poems of remembrance
(as in "Chinaberry" and "Keeping Track"), prayers ("Singling & Doubling
Together" and "Autonomy"), and compelling meditations on loss and
mortality (such as "Easter Morning" and "In View of the Fact"). As in
Volume I, the variety of scale is remarkable, ranging from the
massiveness of Glare to the haiku-like brevity of "Pebble's Story."
The text of each poem has been established after careful consideration
of Ammons's manuscripts and other prepublication materials. Endnotes
detail the poems' composition and publication histories, and also
helpfully annotate references made within the poems. Celebrated poetry
critic Helen Vendler's introduction both humanizes Ammons and traces the
growth of his outsized stature as a major poet, "unquestionably among
the best-loved poets of our time" (David Lehman).
