Reviews for A. R. Ammons: Selected Poems

The average rating for A. R. Ammons: Selected Poems based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-01-13 00:00:00 Gregory D. Dineen Who am I to rate poetry?

Review # 2 was written on 2015-02-12 00:00:00 Jim Bellman I read this collection on the basis of a poem I read upon open the book to a random page... I said Mr. Schafer did you get up to see the comet: and he said Oh no let it go by, I don't care: - Dominion (pg. 43) This poem contains the humour of a poet who once referred to himself as a "drab pot" ("top bard" backwards). Otherwise, the poem is less remarkable in the collection, belonging to the free form poems that seem to get lost among the lengthier poems that are more formally inclined - most notably, the selection from TAPE FOR THE TURN OF THE CENTURY... today I decided to write a long thin poem employing certain classical considerations: this part of the poem is called the pro- logue: it has to do with the business of getting started: first the Must must be acknowledged... - (pg. 28) Another long poem of note, the selection from GLARE, is more characteristic of the poet's later style... I see the eye-level silver shine of the axe blade the big neighbour carried at our house at dawn, and I see the child carried off in arms to the woods, see the sapling split and the child passed through and the tree bound back... - (pg. 95) I must denounce, in the same poem, the poet's misogyny... ...but I love women so much, even the way you can talk them into duplicity, I mean their melting spirituality, like the rose-warmth of nursing, just moves me so much, I feel like saying, please excise me, but are you sure it would be all right if I mounted you... - (pg. 98) Overall, these longer poems failed to impress me, but there were always a few lines that grabbed my attention and redeemed the otherwise long-winded and excessive rhapsodizing on the poet's part... I'm alone too much: get to think other people aren't people - Tape for the Turn of the Year (pg. 37) these self-monitorings create problems where there are none: they fill inanition with misery, when if you can look about you and do things, inanition goes away and so does the misery... - Glare (pg. 101) I prefer the earlier, shorter poems. These poems are unencumbered by the poet's ambition, his preoccupation with the profound (or trying to sound profound). Ironically, the simplicity of these poems come across to me as being more profound than the longer poems. At their best, they are like Zen Koans... I found a weed that had a mirror in it and that mirror looked in at a mirror in me that had a weed in it - Reflective (pg. 24)