by A. R. Ammons
Ammons told Steven P. Schneider in a 1996 interview that the poem was “never premeditated nor was it ever revised,” but in fact it was both. The Cornell archive holds earlier tape treatments of a garbage dump and its attendant seagulls, and some passages of Garbage are inserted verbatim from earlier draft material. The archive also holds three typescripts of Garbage (setting aside fragments of others). The original, here designated TS1, is typed on strips of adding-machine tape. An intermediate one, here designated TS2, consists of typed sections 1–11 and 16–18, and computer printouts of sections 12–15. A third typescript, here designated TS3, consists of the same typed text as TS2 for sections 1–11 (the text is photocopied), and it has the same computer-printed text as TS2 for sections 12–15, but it has computer-printed rather than typed text for sections 16–18. TS3 is the text edited for the book’s production.
TS2 and TS3 are problematic, though, for reasons an exchange between the poet and the book’s copy editor will make clear. In TS1, part 15, in what is line 1663 of the poem as published (just before the words “the nothingness”), Ammons typed the phrase “on the one hand”; in the same passage in TS2 and TS3 (the passage is part of their photocopied overlap), the word “one” is missing. The omission is clearly an accident—“on the hand” makes no sense in that context—but when the copy editor read the line in TS3 and asked about it, Ammons replied, “I didn’t retype this poem, my back was hurting, so a good student of mine did it, sometimes inventively.” The implication is that the student typist must have added “on the hand” where there had previously been nothing like that. Ammons then asks that the phrase be deleted. The exchange suggests at least one of two possibilities: (1) that another person may have, accidentally or otherwise, at some points altered the manuscript, and (2) that at the time the book was being edited for publication, the poet did not recognize all that he himself had written.
In establishing the poem’s text for this edition, I have consulted TS1, TS2, and TS3. With regard to one passage in section 11 and one in section 13, I have adopted the text in TS1 rather than that in TS2 and TS3; see the notes below for details. With regard to sections 16, 17, and 18, I have followed TS2, in which those sections are typed (i.e., typewriter-typed) rather than computer-printed; in most cases where they differ from the computer-printed versions in TS3, it is clear that they offer correct readings of passages mistyped on the computer.
In the 1996 interview with Schneider, Ammons says he knew the manuscript had gone to press with “several typos, missing words and things.” He says he couldn’t bring himself to reread the poem and thus “didn’t proofread it,” but he also says he thought “it would be interesting to have some clutter of that kind.” In fact he did examine the galley proof, responding to the copy editor’s many queries and even writing at the end, “Good copyediting, copyeditor—Many thanks.” This edition makes no attempt to preserve any accidental “clutter.”
Section 1:
Line 5: In TS1 the line reads, “have an unaccomplished mission to accomplish.”
Lines 6–8: The allusion is to a passage from William Carlos Williams’s poem “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”: “It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.”
Line 21: “SS” abbreviates “Social Security.”
Section 2:
Lines 108–9: In a note attached to a copy of TS2 used for the book’s preparation, Norton objected to the passage “stick a finger / in the dame.” Ammons replied, “Too late—what wd I put in its place. I’m trying to establish a kind of wide-swinging narrator so as to get through the garbage and ‘garbage’ later on. And it means to be taken as having been a Freudian slip.” The passage appeared in print without change.
Lines 145–47: One of the best-known Greek philosophers before Socrates, Heraclitus (sixth–fifth century BC) taught that opposites (such as stone and wind) are always related—that they serve as poles that define each other, as well as an axis of possibilities between them.
Section 3:
Line 225: Following TS1 and TS2, “on your ongoing” is corrected to “of your ongoing.”
Line 229: Following TS1 and TS2, “the neessary dynamic” is corrected to “the necessary dynamic.”
Lines 242–44: A reference to the Inferno of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321). The lowest level of Dante’s Hell is the fourth round of the ninth circle, reached in Canto XXXIV. There, completely encased in ice, are traitors to their masters; they are frozen in different positions, some of which suggest the body in motion.
Section 4:
Lines 354–55: “O eternal / flame, principle of the universe” recalls an idea widely attributed to Heraclitus: that fire is the universe’s most basic material.
Line 363: When the copy editor asked whether “syrop” should be changed to “syrup,” Ammons replied, “The Middle English sirop always seemed so much more syrupy. But change if you like.” His preferred spelling was retained.
Section 5:
Lines 454–55: T. S. Eliot’s poem “East Coker” (the second of his Four Quartets) begins with “In my beginning is my end,” and ends with “In my end is my beginning.”
Lines 468–76: Thanks to Roger Gilbert for identifying Edward “Ted” Morris, a member of Cornell’s Department of Romance Studies. Morris died in January 1989.
Section 6:
Line 522: When the copy editor suggested deleting the line’s second “that,” Ammons said no.
Line 544: Goldwin Smith Hall is home to Cornell’s English Department. See the note to “An Improvisation for Goldwin Smith.”
Line 547: For “Ralph,” TS1 has “Bob.” An English Department colleague, Robert Kaske, mentioned in “Extremes and Moderations,” died of a brain tumor on August 8, 1989, the year after University of Toronto Press published his study Medieval Christian Literary Imagery: A Guide to Interpretation. He and Ammons began their appointments at Cornell together in 1964.
Line 560: Cornell’s Lincoln Hall houses the Music Department and the Sidney Cox Library of Music and Dance.
Lines 568–70: That no one steps in the same river twice (i.e., the world is always in flux) is a saying widely attributed to Heraclitus.
Section 7:
Line 658: Following TS2, “accuracay” is corrected to “accuracy”; the passage is absent from TS1.
Line 678: Following TS1 and TS2, “tough” is corrected to “though.”
Line 742: Koko (short for Hanabi-Ko) is a gorilla born on July 4, 1971, at the San Francisco Zoo. At this date she uses one thousand signs based on American Sign Language, and understands over two thousand words of spoken English. See the Gorilla Foundation’s website, koko.org.
Section 9:
Line 922: “Chat” (pronounced shah) is French for “cat.”
Line 942: The French expression “mais oui” (pronounced may we) can be translated here as “oh yes” or “of course.”
Section 10:
Line 988: See note to lines 454–55.
Line 1028: Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi (1883) is a memoir of his time as a Mississippi River steamboat pilot.
Section 11:
Lines 1108–9: The Ithaca Farmers’ Market is beside Cayuga Lake, the longest of New York’s Finger Lakes.
Lines 1197–99: Following TS1, G’s “believe or / in” is here emended to “believe / in.” The passage in G seems to suggest a distinction between believing something and believing in something, and Ammons did savor fine distinctions; however, the construction lacks the necessary repetition of “believe” between “or” and “in.” Given his disclaimer with regard to dubious passages in TS3 (see the note on G, above), and given the fact that the corresponding passage in TS1 is error-free, the construction in TS1 is here adopted.
Section 12:
Line 1215: The Library of Alexandria (in Egypt) was perhaps the most renowned of the ancient world.
Line 1274: Following TS1 and TS2, “couse” is corrected to “cour
se.”
Section 14:
Line 1487: The “a” before “cave” is deleted, following TS1, as is the word “weather’s” at line’s end, following Ammons’s response to an editorial query. (His request that the word be deleted appears to have been misunderstood.)
Section 15:
Line 1549: In TS3, “define” is here corrected to “defines,” following G’s copy editor’s suggestion and Ammons’s approval. The change did not appear in the book as published.
Lines 1562–76: Diabetes led to the amputation of one of Ammons’s father’s legs in 1962, and then the other leg in 1966, before he died later that year.
Line 1662: Following TS1 and TS2, “longset” is corrected to “longest.”
Section 16:
In TS2 there is a scratched-out title for this section: “Sunny Intervals.”
Line 1674: The capitalized article “A” is here changed to lowercase “a.” Beginning with part 2, as a rule the first letter of each numbered part of G is lowercase. When he imported (or restored) “Sunny Intervals,” “Mixed Doubles,” and “A Symmetry of Angels” as parts 16, 17, and 18 of G, Ammons appears to have forgotten to lowercase their first letters. The first letter of part 18 was lowercased before the book reached print, but the capitals beginning parts 16 and 17 remained.
Lines 1689–96: Mérida, Valera, and Cabimas are all cities in Venezuela. Lago de Maracaibo is a Venezuelan bay.
Line 1706: Following TS2, “the stasis” is corrected to “a stasis.”
Line 1751: Following TS2, “lost” is corrected to “lose.”
Line 1760: Following TS2, “full” is inserted after “double.”
Line 1775: Following TS2, “country” is corrected to “county.”
Line 1785: Queried by the copy editor about “ypointing,” Ammons explained that he was adopting a Middle English spelling.
Line 1796: Following TS2, “to scrap” is corrected to “to a scrap.”
Line 1810: Following TS2, “into pure” is corrected to “into a pure.”
Line 1842: For “star-ypointing,” see note to line 1785.
Line 1868: Following TS2, “there” is corrected to “here.”
Line 1888: Following TS2, “the” is corrected to “they.”
Line 1908: Following TS2, “or” is corrected to “on.”
Section 17:
In TS2 there is a scratched-out title to this section: “Mixed Doubles.”
Line 1910: “The” is here changed to “the.” See note to line 1674.
Line 1915: Following TS2, “elastomotors” is corrected to “elastomers.”
Lines 1916–19: An account of U.S. v. Marine Shale Processors, Inc. is available at the U.S. Department of Justice’s website, justice.gov.
Line 1921: TS2 and TS3 have “post coitum triste”; the copy editor asked for permission to change that to “post coital triste,” and Ammons replied, “whichever is correct.” The change was made, but the Oxford English Dictionary authorizes Ammons’s original formulation, which is here restored.
Line 1927: Following TS2, “an” is corrected to “the.”
Line 1937: Following TS2, “countrywide” is corrected to “century-wide.”
Lines 1960–61: In his poem “Of Money,” the English poet Barnabe Googe (1540–1594) argues that money is more reliable than friendship. Whereas friends will desert you on “a lowering day,” he says, “Gold never starts aside, but in distress / Finds ways enough to ease thine heaviness.” Googe’s poem is typed on a sheet of notepad paper among Ammons’s papers at Cornell.
Line 1976: Following TS2, “harm” is corrected to “harms.”
Line 2006: Following TS2 and TS3, “head” is corrected to “heard.”
Section 18:
In TS2 there is a scratched-out title to this section: “A Symmetry of Angels.”
Line 2044: Following TS2, “the” is corrected to “then.”
Line 2077: Following TS2 and TS3, “jut” is corrected to “just.”
Line 2100: Following TS2, “protals” is corrected to “portals.”
Line 2122: Following TS2, “of the” is corrected to “of a.”
Line 2139: Following TS2, “emptiness, emtiness” is corrected to “emptiness, emptiness.”
Line 2144: Following TS2, “at” is corrected to “get.”
Line 2159: Following TS2, “of totally” is corrected to “of the totally.”
Line 2163: Wanamaker’s was a department store with major locations in Philadelphia and New York City. The words “breeze the aisles” are corrected to “breeze aisles,” following the TS of “A Symmetry of Angels.”
Line 2181: Following TS2, “now” is corrected to “mow.”
Line 2198: Following TS2, “into considerations” is corrected to “into the considerations.”
§
BRINK ROAD
Brink Road was published by W. W. Norton in 1996. Following the list of acknowledgments was a one-sentence explanation of the title: “Brink Road lies off NY 96 between Candor and Catatonk.” Brink Road is also mentioned in part 30 of Glare.
The commentary on the front jacket flap said that “[t]he more than 150 poems in Brink Road date from 1973 to the present and none has previously appeared in book form.” However, three poems—“Lofty Calling,” “Broad Brush,” and “Enfield Falls”—had in fact first been collected in The North Carolina Poems, a selection of Ammons’s poems assembled and edited (with the poet’s blessing) by Alex Albright, and published by North Carolina Wesleyan College Press in 1994.
“A Sense of Now”: First appeared in Poetry, Apr. 1996.
“Picking Up Equations”: First appeared in The Paris Review, no. 134 (Spring 1995).
“Enameling”: 1979. First appeared in The Cornell Review, no. 7 (Fall 1979).
“Sparklings”: First appeared in Grand Street, vol. 7, no. 4 (Summer 1988).
“Cool Intimacies”: July 30, 1975.
“Fascicle”: Sept. 27, 1993. A fascicle is a small bundle, or a section of a written work published in installments. The word has long been applied to booklets Emily Dickinson made of her poems but kept to herself.
“Loving People”: Feb. 27, 1985. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 40, no. 2 (Summer 1987). In line 3, “trade-off’s” is plural, not possessive; although the apostrophe is in both the TS and the published book, it is deleted here.
“Standing Light Up”: July 5, 1981. First appeared in Verse, no. 3 (1985).
“Establishment”: BR credits first publication to this end up postcards.
“Broad Brush”: First appeared in North Carolina Literary Review, vol. 1, no. 1 (Summer 1992).
“First Cold”: Oct. 3, 1987.
“Regards Regardless”: May 13, 1979. First appeared in Pembroke Magazine, no. 18 (1986).
“The Time Rate of Change”: May 25, 1985. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 40, no. 2 (Summer 1987).
“Greeting Verses”: Apr. 2, 1974.
“Mind Stone”: Mar. 12, 1970.
“Downing Lines”: Apr. 6, 1979. First appeared in Raritan, vol. 4, no. 1 (Summer 1984).
“Whitewater”: May 3, 1969. First appeared in The Yale Review, vol. 80, no. 4 (Oct. 1992).
“Erminois”: Jan. 6, 1975. The title, pronounced er-mi-NOYZ, is a word for a heraldic fur with black spots on a golden background.
“Construing Deconstruction”: Feb. 2, 1983. First appeared in Verse, no. 4 (1985).
“Good Morning, This Morning”: June 12, 1994. The reference is to Jesus’ resurrection.
“Walking Song”: First appeared in The Walking Magazine, Feb.–Mar. 1988.
“Sentiment”: Aug. 14, 1993. First appeared in The New Yorker, Feb. 21, 1994.
“Anxiety’s Prosody”: Jan. 7, 1986. First appeared in Poetry, Oct. 1988. Reprinted in The Best American Poetry 1989, edited by Donald Hall. Ammons wrote the following note for that reprint:
I remember reading somewhere—in Shakespeare, maybe—that a person under extreme anxiety tears of
f his or her clothes. In a state of anxiety you can’t stand corporality and you want to attenuate into openness and strip away the bodily impediments. That relieves the anxiety in some way. Anxiety tries to get rid of everything thick and material—to arrive at a spiritual emptiness, the emptiness that is spiritual.
“The Land of the Knobble-Jobble Tree”: May 1985. First appeared in Grand Street, no. 45 (1993). Line 16: Following TS, “membes” is corrected to “members.”
“Capabilities”: Feb. 7, 1978.
“Minutial Impress”: Mar. 11, 1979.
“Showups”: July 26, 1971.
“Modes Against Too Much”: First appeared in The Paris Review, no. 127 (Summer 1993).
“Sky Rides”: Aug. 14, 1993.
“Heights Known”: Jan. 8, 1979.
“A Little Thing Like That”: Jan. 22, 1986. First appeared in Bound, no. 1 (1986). It also appeared in Chelsea, no. 55 (1993), before its collection in BR, which acknowledged only the Chelsea publication.
“Getting About”: First appeared in Panoply, vol. 2, no. 1 (Winter–Spring 1988).
“December Starlings”: Dec. 3, 1984. First appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal, vol. 45, no. 4, Chapbook 22 (Summer 1995).