by A. R. Ammons
don’t know if you’ve ever noticed: they’ll
say to a stranger stepped into the elevator,
do they still have shoeshops, or
5absorbed in monologue, they’ll giggle
at you as if you’d been there all the
time: meaningless contacts from the irrelevant
baffle people, or else they look
straight ahead as if they’d never been
10called on: I want to say, what’s it
to you, you old fiddle twanger: old myself
I look into the panel mirror and wonder if
I spoke to myself: by that time the
elevator stops: I get off.
1998
Don’t Rush on My Account
The crows around here are getting to be as big
as eagles: maybe it’s the morning blahs but
when they swoosh in behind the branches they
look like marauders: I can feel them picking
5fish out of the creeks of my head: trios of
caws mingle and scrawl: that lady down the
street feeds them slices of white bread in
winter: winters don’t lean them up: they
_________
know the difference between bread and snow, and
10many a January morning they’ve arrived before
the late day and are ruffling in the trees: oh,
yes, I wouldn’t be surprised, they are evolving
and I can’t imagine into what, something bigger:
their prominent peckers which they put to such
15expert use, I hope they don’t get any bigger:
I also fear the feet: nobody wants bigger
crowsfeet: those pincer claws could grasp your
scalp, and heads could drop their peckers over
and swallow your eyeballs: but a scattering
20of killed squirrels on the winter roads, a
warm spell here and there getting the flea-bitten
little rascals out, that keeps a running
streak, if half-starved, of protein going, then
a few bundles of green-bud on bushes (and, of
25course, the white slices) and you have a pretty
good chance of setting up the circumstances
for dramatic shifts to cruel cousins of the
sky, a chancy day. . . .
1998
Run Ragged
I said, I don’t want to be older, but it’s older
(and older) or nothing, right: and day by day
it’s been older every day since beginning began:
still, there was a bracket of young years
_________
when one could say, these are not the
older years or the baby years: there are, as
Shakespeare said, groups of time, the
transitions from one group to another usually
unalarming: people who have nothing to say
10should say nothing: they should drum syllables
or squeeze verbs (or nouns) or cast them like
die, craps, creeps: for example, I don’t
feel at home in this universe and it may be
the only one: that is so pathetic: I think
15that is so heartrending with content:
how can the place you come from not be your
home: is the only way to make a phrase
interesting to make it sound like it’s not a
phrase: or it could be two phrases or go two
20different ways when you are really going nowhere[:]
well, humanity needs a better track,
the track itself worn off or grown over:
1998
Quanta
When the bubbles of nothingness rise
out of nothing—
a brittle sheen like blown glass,
cooled motion, forms
5and in the
chinks of such congealing,
we have our lives,
build our wars, consider
honors, and
10carefully seek to know
the meaning of this
before meaning crinkles and blows away
1998
NOTES
A Note on the Text
For each poem first collected in a book published after 1977, the copy-text is the text in the first printing of that book, with emendations listed here.
Poems reprinted in the The Selected Poems (the 1986 expanded edition) and The Really Short Poems (1990) appear in this edition in their original sequences in their original books. However, they include all revisions Ammons made before reprinting them in those retrospectives. Generally such revisions were small, but there are a few exceptions.
For poems published in periodicals or elsewhere but never collected in one of Ammons’s books, the copy-texts are his own typescripts, when available; when those typescripts have not been available, the texts presented are those of the poems as published. If Ammons revised an uncollected poem after its publication, the version printed here is the latest version found.
For posthumously published poems, the copy-texts are Ammons’s own typescripts. In some cases, the poem as published did not reflect later revisions; in each such instance, his revisions are adopted here.
Annotations and Emendations
The following notes give some basic information that may be of interest to scholars and general readers. If Ammons recorded a date of first composition for a poem, that date—as specifically as he recorded it—appears here immediately after the poem’s title. If a poem appeared in a periodical or other venue before its collection in one of his books, that publication information appears next; for publication information regarding this volume’s earliest-written poems, I am indebted to Stuart Wright for his excellent A. R. Ammons: A Bibliography 1954–1979 (Winston-Salem, NC: Wake Forest University, 1980). Afterward come emendations, as well as other notes about the text, including brief explanations of names and non-English words and phrases. I have assumed this edition’s readers will not consist entirely of specialists in poetry or American literature, but I have also assumed that all will have access to a standard dictionary. Absent from the notes are poems with no recorded date of composition, no publication prior to collection in one of the poet’s books, no need of emendation, and no details that—left unannotated—seem likely to impede a general reader’s understanding.
Given Ammons’s linguistic playfulness and fondness for earlier spellings, an editor should not assume that irregularities are errors. For instance, though recent American dictionaries define “mucus” as a noun and “mucous” as an adjective, in the poems collected here Ammons uses the latter spelling three times (and never the former) for the noun; since his spelling is consistent, and since the Oxford English Dictionary does document that spelling’s use for the noun in eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and early twentieth-century sources, it stands here. Another example is in section 4 of Garbage: when that book’s copy editor suggested correcting “syrop” to “syrup,” Ammons replied, “The Middle English sirop always seemed so much more syrupy. But change if you like.” The book retained his spelling in that passage, and so does this edition. A third example is in section 42 of “The Ridge Farm,” where in lieu of the term “la langue” (French for “the language”) we find “la lange”; since the OED’s entry for “langue” offers “lange” as a Middle English spelling, that spelling stands here.
Some irregularities in the books have been simple mistakes. Typically they have been spelling or punctuation errors introduced at some stage of production, and fixing them has usually been a straightforward matter of consulting Ammons’s typescripts for the correct text. In a few instances I have made other kinds of emendations. For example, the poet sometimes formed a plural of a nonpossessive noun by adding an apostrophe before the s, and that construction occasionally made its way into print; in this edition those apostrophes are deleted.
Unless a note indicates otherwise, all references
to “typescripts,” abbreviated “TS” in the singular and “TSS” in the plural, are to typescripts Ammons produced himself on a typewriter.
Ammons’s book titles are abbreviated in the notes as follows:
O
Ommateum with Doxology (1955)
ESL
Expressions of Sea Level (1964)
CI
Corsons Inlet: A Book of Poems (1965)
TTY
Tape for the Turn of the Year (1965)
NP
Northfield Poems (1966)
SP68
Selected Poems (1968)
U
Uplands: New Poems (1970)
B
Briefings: Poems Small and Easy (1971)
CP51–71
Collected Poems 1951–1971 (1972)
S
Sphere: The Form of a Motion (1974)
D
Diversifications: Poems (1975)
SnP
The Snow Poems (1977)
HR
Highgate Road (1977)
SP77
The Selected Poems 1951–1977 (1977)
CT
A Coast of Trees: Poems (1981)
WH
Worldly Hopes: Poems (1982)
LEC
Lake Effect Country: Poems (1983)
SP86
The Selected Poems: Expanded Edition (1986)
SV
Sumerian Vistas: Poems (1987)
RSP
The Really Short Poems (1990)
Ga
Garbage (1993)
BR
Brink Road: Poems (1996)
Gl
Glare (1997)
BF
Bosh and Flapdoodle: Poems (2005)
§
SIX-PIECE SUITE
This six-part poem appeared as a chapbook from Stuart Wright’s Palaemon Press in 1978, in an edition of 230 copies.
Line 42 (in part IV): Following TS at Cornell, “she died naturally” is changed to “she, naturally, died.”
Line 50 (in part V): Following TS at Cornell, “cluster” is changed to “clusters.”
Line 62 (in part VI): Following TS at Cornell, a comma is inserted after “wind.”
§
A COAST OF TREES
Published by W. W. Norton in 1981, A Coast of Trees won the National Book Critics Circle Award the same year.
“Coast of Trees”: January 24, 1974. First appeared in Rainy Day, vol. 7, no. 2 (Spring 1977).
“Swells”: First appeared in The Ohio Review, vol. 16, no. 2 (Winter 1975).
“Continuing”: July 20, 1975. First appeared in The Iowa Review, vol. 8, no. 2 (Spring 1977).
“In Memoriam Mae Noblitt”: Feb. 6, 1979. First appeared in The American Poetry Review, vol. 8, no. 3 (May–June 1979). Originally from South Carolina, Mae Farris Noblitt (1937–1979) was an Ithaca painter whose work was exhibited in several Northeastern galleries before her untimely death. A posthumous chapbook of her poems, Poems in Waiting, appeared in 1979, prefaced by Ammons’s poem and a biographical note by her husband, James S. Noblitt.
“Weather-Bound”: Nov. 27, 1976. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 31, no. 4 (Winter 1979).
“Where”: Sept. 11, 1976. First appeared in Rainy Day, vol. 7, no. 2 (Spring 1977).
“Strolls”: Dec. 1, 1976. First appeared in Poetry, Nov. 1978.
“Getting Through”: First appeared (as “The Brook Has Worked Out the Prominences of a Bend”) in Poetry, Nov. 1978. Line 21: Following TS, “times” is corrected to “time.”
“Eventually Is Soon Enough”: Feb. 27, 1977. First appeared (as “Warming Trend”) in the Beloit Poetry Journal, vol. 28, no. 4 (Summer 1978).
“Density”: Oct. 30, 1976. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 31, no. 4 (Winter 1979).
“Vehicle”: First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 31, no. 4 (Winter 1979).
“Response”: First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 31, no. 4 (Winter 1979).
“Easter Morning”: Apr. 10, 1977, as the first part of a poem titled “An Improvisation for the Other Way Around.” First appeared in Poetry, Apr. 1979.
“White Dwarf”: Sept. 9, 1976.
“Distraction”: Oct. 29, 1978. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 33, no. 1 (Spring 1980).
“Rapids”: First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 33, no. 1 (Spring 1980).
“Neighbors”: May 11, 1975. First appeared in Southern Poetry Review, vol. 16, no. 2 (1977).
“Keepsake”: Jan. 7, 1979. First appeared in The American Poetry Review, vol. 8, no. 3 (May–June 1979).
“Antithesis”: Dec. 17, 1978. First appeared in The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Winter 1979.
“Breaking Out”: Oct. 28, 1977. First appeared as Palaemon Broadside Number Five, Palaemon Press, 1978.
“Range”: First appeared in The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Winter 1979.
“Dry Spell Spiel”: June 6, 1978. First appeared in The American Poetry Review, vol. 8, no. 3 (May–June 1979).
“Mountain Wind”: Mar. 23, 1967. First appeared in Diacritics, vol. 3, no. 4 (Winter 1973).
“Night Finding”: Dec. 31, 1978. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 33, no. 1 (Spring 1980).
“Country Music”: Apr. 15, 1978. First appeared in The Michigan Quarterly Review, vol. 17, no. 4 (Fall 1978).
“Wiring”: Sept. 30, 1978. First appeared in The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Winter 1979.
“Sunday at McDonald’s”: Dec. 27, 1977. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 31, no. 4 (Winter 1979).
“Sweetened Change”: Sept. 21, 1978. First appeared in The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Winter 1979.
“Parting”: May 16, 1978. First appeared (as “Parting Lovers”) in The Laurel Review, vol. 12, no. 2 (Summer 1978).
“Feel Like Traveling On”: Sept. 24, 1978. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 33, no. 1 (Spring 1980).
“Poverty”: First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 31, no. 4 (Winter 1979).
“Givings”: May 13, 1978. First appeared in The American Poetry Review, vol. 8, no. 3 (May–June 1979).
“An Improvisation for the Stately Dwelling”: First appeared in The American Poetry Review, vol. 8, no. 2 (Mar.–Apr. 1979).
“An Improvisation for Jerald Bullis”: First appeared in The American Poetry Review, vol. 8, no. 2 (Mar.–Apr. 1979). Bullis was a friend of Ammons and a poet whose books include Taking Up the Serpent (1973), Adorning the Buckhorn Helmet (1976), and Orion: A Poem (1976). See the note on “The Ridge Farm,” which he helped shape.
“Persistences”: Jan. 19, 1974. First appeared in Poetry, May 1978.
§
WORLDLY HOPES
Worldly Hopes was published by W. W. Norton in 1982. Its dedicatee, the poet Elliott Coleman, died in 1980.
“Room Conditioner”: May 21, 1977. First appeared in Tendril, no. 2 (Spring–Summer 1978).
“Extravaganza”: Oct. 3, 1976. First appeared in Abraxas, nos. 21–22 (1980).
“Righting Wrongs”: July 24, 1979. First appeared in Ubu, no. 3 (1981).
“Subsumption”: Jan. 1, 1974. WH credits first publication to Brim.
“Spruce Woods”: First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 33, no. 1 (Spring 1980).
“I Went Back”: First appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal, vol. 28, no. 4 (Summer 1978).
“Snow Roost”: Mar. 1978. The poem appears here as it was revised for RSP. In WH the poem appeared thus:
Last night the
fluffiest inhabitant
filled the
cedars deep, but this clear
morning windy,
flurries blizzard-thick
explode flight
into local blindings
“Shading Flight In”: Jan. 28, 1980.
“Reaction Rates”: Oct. 1976.
“Lost & Found”: Oct. 19, 1980.
“Epistemology”: May 24, 1978. First appeared in Epoch, vol. 28, no. 2 (Winter 1979).
“The Role of Society in the Artist”: May 11, 1977. First appeared in Epoch, vol. 27, no. 2 (Winter 1978).
“Scribbles”: June 6, 1978.
“Hermit Lark”: May 15, 1978. First appeared in Imprint, no. 2 (1980).
“Shit List”: Sept. 1, 1969. First appeared in Abraxas, no. 5 (1972). Line 2: The reference is to the poet Jonathan Williams (1929–2008). Line 17: The spelling “mandril” appears both in TS and in WH, and is recognized as a variant spelling in the Oxford English Dictionary.
“Limits”: Mar. 18, 1959. First appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Dec. 1973.
“Bride”: Nov. 24, 1978. A graduate of Cornell’s MFA program, Minfong Ho has won acclaim as a writer for children and young adults. Her books include the novels Sing to the Dawn (1978) and The Stone Goddess (2003).
“The Scour”: The poem appears here as in RSP, with the word “up” added after “except” in line 4.
“Oblivion’s Bloom”: Sept. 27, 1977.
“Immortality”: Oct. 1976. First appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal, vol. 28, no. 4 (Summer 1978).
“Design”: Oct. 30, 1978. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 33, no. 1 (Spring 1980).
“Augmentations in Early March”: Mar. 9, 1980.
“Working Differentials”: First appeared in The Arts Journal, June 1979.