by A. R. Ammons
THE COMPLETE POEMS OF
A. R. AMMONS
VOLUME 1
1955–1977
Edited by Robert M. West
Introduction by Helen Vendler
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CONTENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION by Helen Vendler
Finishing Up
OMMATEUM WITH DOXOLOGY (1955)
So I Said I Am Ezra
The Sap Is Gone Out of the Trees
In Strasbourg in 1349
I Broke a Sheaf of Light
Some Months Ago
I Went Out to the Sun
At Dawn in 1098
The Whaleboat Struck
Turning a Moment to Say So Long
Turning
Dying in a Mirthful Place
When Rahman Rides
With Ropes of Hemp
My Dice Are Crystal
Having Been Interstellar
Coming to Sumer
I Assume the World Is Curious About Me
I Struck a Diminished Seventh
Gilgamesh Was Very Lascivious
When I Set Fire to the Reed Patch
The Grass Miracles
I Came in a Dark Woods Upon
A Treeful of Cleavage Flared Branching
[Behind the I]
One Composing
In the Wind My Rescue Is
[I should have stayed longer idle]
A Crippled Angel
Dropping Eyelids Among the Aerial Ash
I Came Upon a Plateau
Doxology
EXPRESSIONS OF SEA LEVEL (1964)
Raft
Hymn (“I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth . . .”)
Risks and Possibilities
Terrain
Nelly Myers
Bridge
Requiem
Guide
Expressions of Sea Level
Unsaid
Mechanism
Batsto
Mansion
Close-Up
Mountain Liar
Prospecting
Jersey Cedars
Hardweed Path Going
Bourn
Grassy Sound
Silver
Concentrations
River
Motion for Motion
Identity
What This Mode of Motion Said
Still
The Golden Mean
Nucleus
CORSONS INLET (1965)
Visit
Moment
Winter Scene
Corsons Inlet
Dunes
Street Song
Lines
Coon Song
Portrait
Jungle Knot
Dark Song
Resort
Upright
Catalyst
Loss
World
Butterflyweed
Configurations
Glass
Morning Glory
The Strait
Spindle
The Yucca Moth
Anxiety
Four Motions for the Pea Vines
Hymn II (“So when the year had come full round . . .”)
Hymn III (“In the hour of extreme // importance . . .”)
Open
Epiphany
Prodigal
Motion
The Misfit
The Watch
Libation
The Wide Land
Thaw
Whose Timeless Reach
Ritual for Eating the World
Driving Through
March Song
Gravelly Run
TAPE FOR THE TURN OF THE YEAR (1965)
6 Dec: (“today I / decided to write / a long / thin / poem . . .”)
7 Dec: (“today / I feel a bit different . . .”)
8 Dec: (“the way I could tell / today / that yesterday is dead . . .”)
9 Dec: (“sunny again: // last night a plane . . .”)
10 Dec: (“sunshine & shade / alternate at 32 . . .”)
11 Dec: (“they changed the forecast / today . . .”)
12 Dec: (“clouds came in soon after / dark last night . . .”)
13 Dec: (“my book came today, Friday / the 13th . . .”)
14 Dec: (“today / came in an / opposite way / of rain turning into snow . . .”)
15 Dec: (“my poem went for a ride / today . . .”)
16 Dec: (“first I heard / on the radio this morning / it was / 19 degrees . . .”)
17 Dec: (“Sisyphus / struggling / with his / immortal / rock . . .”)
18 Dec: (“today / broke as if under water . . .”)
19 Dec: (“this ole world could be / one . . .”)
20 Dec: (“today is cold: hit / ten last night: / and it not winter / yet . . .”)
21 Dec: (“the jay was out / before sunrise / wheeling & dealing . . .”)
22 Dec: (“we lost our mule Kate in / the fall / to a chattel mortgage . . .”)
23 Dec: (“I was thinking when I woke / up . . .”)
26 Dec: (“today is bright, warm . . .”)
27 Dec: (“today is / cloudy / in several ways . . .”)
28 Dec: (“today / is dim / again . . .”)
30 Dec: (“today is 19 & / sunny . . .”)
31 Dec: (“today the dry burn in / my nose of a cold / coming on . . .”)
1 Jan: (“raining: / at the borderline & / promise / of snow . . .”)
2 Jan: (“today / feels above freezing & is / sunshiny . . .”)
3 Jan: (“today is warm & sunny: / may go up to 50 . . .”)
4 Jan: (“3:20 pm: today is near- / ly shot aready . . .”)
5 Jan: (“today is sunny & it may / be warm again . . .”)
6 Jan: (“today is splennid again . . .”)
7 Jan: (“today is rainy . . .”)
8 Jan: (“today is sunny & warming . . .”)
9 Jan: (“today ben / der clouds . . .”)
10 Jan: (“today is windy as March / & sunny . . .”)
NORTHFIELD POEMS (1966)
Kind
Height
Joshua Tree
Reflective
Landscape with Figures
The Constant
Contingency
One:Many
Halfway
Interference
Saliences
Trap
The Foot-Washing
Recovery
Two Motions
Composing
Ithaca, N.Y.
Consignee
February Beach
Self-Portrait
Passage
Peak
Zone
Muse
Sitting Down, Looking Up
Belief
Song
Orientale
Mays Landing
Sphere
First Carolina Said-Song
Second Carolina Said-Song
Discoverer
A Symmetry of Thought
Holding On
Uh, Philosophy
The Numbers
Empty
Unbroken
Fall
The Wind Coming Down From
Interval
Way to Go
UPLANDS (1970)
Snow Log
Upland
Periphery
Clarity
Classic
Conserving the Magnitude of Uselessness
If Anything Will Level with You Water Will
The Unifying Principle
Runoff
Transaction
Then One
Further On
Hope’s Okay
Life in the Boondocks
Spiel
Guitar Recitativos
Laser
Virtu
Choice
Body Politic
Apologia pro Vita Sua
Offset
Mountain Talk
Impulse
Needs
Help
Love Song (“Like the hills under dusk . . .”)
Love Song (2) (“Rings of birch bark . . .”)
Mule Song
Script
Holly
Small Song
Possibility Along a Line of Difference
Cascadilla Falls
Summer Session
BRIEFINGS: POEMS SMALL AND EASY (1971)
Center
Mechanics
Up
After Yesterday
Event
High & Low
Peracute Lucidity
Increment
Bees Stopped
Storm
Two Possibilities
Medicine for Tight Spots
Brooks & Other Notions
Cougar
This Black Rich Country
Attention
Return
This Bright Day
Look for My White Self
Undersea
Auto Mobile
Wagons
September Drift
Civics
He Held Radical Light
Locus
Circles
Working Still
Tooling Up
Father
Sumerian
Hippie Hop
Garden
Hymn IV (“I hold you responsible . . .”)
The Mark
Loft
Poetics
Working with Tools
Doubling the Nerve
Making
Dominion (“I said / Mr. Schafer . . .”)
Round
Tight
The Woodsroad
WCW
Saying
Looking Over the Acreage
Gain
Off
Treaties
Convergence
Project
North Jersey
Ship
Play
Spinejacking
Shore Fog
Meteorology
Exotic
Hosts
Crevice
Transducer
Mean
Banking
Elegy for a Jet Pilot
Countering
The Quince Bush
Square
Autumn Song
Early Morning in Early April
Reversal
The Confirmers
Involved
Admission
Mission
Cut the Grass
The Limit
Concerning the Exclusions of the Object
The Makers
Levitation
Medium
Transfer
Monday
Pluralist
Here & Now
The Run-Through
The Put-Down Come On
The City Limits
PREVIOUSLY UNCOLLECTED POEMS FROM COLLECTED POEMS 1951–1971 (1972)
The Pieces of My Voice
Chaos Staggered Up the Hill
Eolith
Hymn V (“Assure us you side with order . . .”)
Spring Song
Come Prima
Terminus
Back Country
Christmas Eve
Communication
The Whole Half
Bay Bank
Money
Fall Creek
Utensil
The Fall
April
Lion::Mouse
Breaks
Heat
Definitions
Path
Mediation
Snow Whirl
Reward
Timing
Trouble Making Trouble
Rome Zoo
Alternatives
Positions
Reassessing
Renovating
Devising
Emplacement
Touching Down
Spring Coming
Ocean City
Chasm
Bearing Mercy
Tossup
Plexus
Three
Miss
Celestial
Correction
Mirrorment
Coming To
Even
Windy Trees
Photosynthesis
Making Waves
Clearing
The Account
Winter Saint
The Imagined Land
The King of Ice
Village, Town, City—Highway, Road, Path
Lonely Splendor
The Swan Ritual
He Said
One More Time
Drought
Image
Equinox
Russet Gold
Essay on Poetics
Plunder
Triphammer Bridge
Lollapalooza: 22 February
Satyr Formalist
Late Romantic
Spaceship
Cleavage
Schooling
Space Travel
High Surreal
Sharp Lookout
Right On
Rectitude
Object
Ground Tide
Translating
Sorting
The Next Day
Extremes and Moderations
Mid-August
Clearing the Dark Symbiosis
Viable
Precursors
Lonesome Valley
Delaware Water Gap
Day
Staking Claim
The Eternal City
The Shoreless Tide
Grace Abounding
Phase
Hibernaculum
Eyesight
Left
The Arc Inside and Out
SPHERE: THE FORM OF A MOTION (1974)
For Harold Bloom
Sphere: The Form of a Motion
DIVERSIFICATIONS (1975)
Transcendence
Insouciance
Narrows
Salt Flats
Full
Uppermost
Lightning
The Marriage
Self-Portraits
Double Exposure
Currencies
Bonus
Emerson
Meeting the Opposition
Appearances
Measure
Delight
The Stemless Flower
Imperialist
Poem
Imago
Light Orders
History
Self-Projection
Outside-the-Household Hint
Metaphysic
Tussock
The Make
Juice
Terminations
Fundamental Constant
Making It
Scope
Weight
Ballad
Three Travelogues
Sight Unseen
Facing
Glass Globe
Separations
Circling
Fix
Weather
Coward
Crying Out
Certainty
The Flaw
Triplet
Design
Rocking
Ars Poetica
Course Discourse
Obtrusion
Louise
80-Proof
Having to Do with Birth
Limp Lump
Mind
Attenuations
Turning
Swipe
P
aradise
Satisfaction
The Unmirroring Peak
Pray Without Ceasing
THE SNOW POEMS (1977)
Words of Comfort
One Must Recall as One Mourns the Dead
Things Change, the Shit Shifts
My
Here I Sit, Fifty in the
My Father Used to Bring Banana
Have You Seen the Severe Waters
Early October
Terror of
Ivy, a Winding)
The Hieroglyphic Gathered, the Books
Your Full-Service Mover, Madam
When in Early
The Arc
There! the Light of Human Reason!
Hard Lard
Hard Fist
8:45 A.M.—Doorbell Rings: Wife
Shall Will Be Used Properly or Will Shall
No Tirement Like Retirement
Light Falls Shadow and Beam through the Limbo
Mist Curtains Lower and Dissolve
The Snow Is Fine-Sightless Today the Ground
The Hen Pheasants Streak Out of the
Dawn Clear
If You Were Standing under the Elm and
In the Old
Forecast for Today (Winter’s Firstday)
I Come in from the Snowy World
Poetry Is the Smallest
Christmas Eve Morning
Analysis Mines and Leaves to Heal
Snowed Last Night a Lot but Warmed Up
Those in Ledge Fright Seek
But If the Way Will
The Sun Climbs Daily Higher
A Seventeen Morning &
The First Morning in a Few
This Is
Quilted Spreads
Dung Ball, Round Graveyard
I See Downhill a Patch
The Stomach Is Quite
My Neighbor Shakes Feed along
Nature As Waterfalls
The Wind Picks Up Slick
Cold Didn’t Keep the Stuff
Teeth Out
When I Think of “the Poet
You Can’t Get It Right
The Perfect Journey Is
Snow of the
[here a month of snow]
The Prescriptive Stalls As
After the Dissolve
A Sift, Sprinkling, or Veil
Structureless Rage, Perhaps
Tell What Will Not Tell Direct
Spread It Thin
Dark Day, Warm and Windy
Like Fifty
A 41 Morning, Still Cloudy
Produce and Fuctifry
I Look Up Guff and Find the First
One at One with His Desire
Dull Lull
The Temperature Rose 15 Degrees over
As for Fame I’ve Had It
When One Is a Child One Lives
Cloud Strays Rounded Up
It’s Half an Hour Later Before
This Poem Concerns
The Word Cries Out
I Woke Up at 6 and It Was
A Flock of My Days
You Can’t Imitate
Spring’s Old Hat Is Older
The Temperature Fell
You Can
Cunit
It’s a Wonder the Body
Today Was Like Vomiting
It’s April 1
I’m Unwilling
The Sky Clabbered Up with
A Single Fact
It Does Not Rain in
One Loves
The Miltonic (Miltownic) Isn’t
My Father Used to Tell of an
Arm’s Length Renders One
I’m the Type
Snow Showed a Full Range
No Matter
It’s So Dry the Brook, Down
Today Will Beat Anything