Thanks to the link provided in Don Share’s post on Harriet, which discusses A. R. Ammons as “the great prosodic centrist of American poetry” (and no, Share isn’t using “centrist” in its usual sense), I found myself reading Stephen Burt’s incisive essay on Ammons, entitled “Naive Melody.” I would have preferred “native” to “naive” in describing Ammons, who in my estimation ranks among the greatest mid-20th century American poets. Of course, Burt uses the word in a special sense that does help define what sets Ammons apart.
Ammons was prolific, stylistically inventive, and intellectually adventurous; one can’t read a significant number of his poems without realizing that he faithfully remained open to signals from every side of his personality and from both the micro and macro dimensions of the world. Since this psychic openness is something I value above all in a writer, Ammons has always been in my personal pantheon.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to read Ammons, here’s a link to one of his masterpiece’s, “Corsons Inlet.” Enjoy!
No, I haven’t read <BR/><I>Sphere: The Form of a Motion?</I><BR/>but I will. I’ll try to get it<BR/>through the library here.<BR/><BR/>Thank you.
Good last point, Brian. I’ve always thought of Ammons as Whitman with a leavening of ironic humor—although Ammons doesn’t seem to make claims on the order of "what I assume you shall assume." Have you read his <I>Sphere: The Form of a Motion</I>? It’s a single sentence spun out across 155 12-line (4-tercet) sections. Beautiful!
I’ve been haunting Harriet for some<BR/>while, and I also read Share’s post<BR/>and Burt’s article. Years ago I<BR/>read "Corson’s Inlet" but the<BR/>narrow constraint of <B>Tape for<BR/>the Turn of the Year</B> influenced<BR/>the style of a much less ambitious<BR/>poem I wrote.<BR/><BR/>I know of a Yale Younger Series<BR/>poet who was a student under<BR/>A. R. Ammons.<BR/><BR/>Actually, now