by A. R. Ammons
“Hymn”: Apr. 2, 1956. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 10, no. 3 (Autumn 1957).
“Risks and Possibilities”: June 1959. First appeared (as “Canto 7:”) in The Hudson Review, vol. 13, no. 3 (Autumn 1960).
“Terrain”: Aug. 3, 1959. First appeared (as “Canto 10:”) in The Hudson Review, vol. 13, no. 3 (Autumn 1960).
“Nelly Myers”: Apr. 4, 1961. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 16, no. 2 (Summer 1963). In his 1992 interview with Alex Albright, Ammons said his family was helped on the farm by someone named Sally Tyree, “an old woman who lived on the farm, not related, but [she] had been taken in by us.” In a copy of CP51–71, he struck through the poem’s title, wrote “Sally Tyree” above it, replaced “Nelly Myers” in line 50 with “Sally Tyree,” and replaced “Nel” with “Sal” in line 51—but then wrote “STET” next to those changes.
“Bridge”: June 1959. First appeared (as “Canto 12:”) in The Hudson Review, vol. 13, no. 3 (Autumn 1960).
“Requiem”: May 1957. First appeared in Accent: A Quarterly of New Literature, vol. 19, no. 4 (Autumn 1959).
“Guide”: June 1959. First appeared (as “Canto 1:”) in The Hudson Review, vol. 13, no. 3 (Autumn 1960).
“Expressions of Sea Level”: Jan. 21, 1962. First appeared in Poetry, June 1963. Line 79 ends with a period in ESL and also in CP51–71. As printed in Poetry and in SP68, however, the line ends with a comma, and that punctuation is restored here.
“Unsaid”: Aug. 31, 1959. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 16, no. 2 (Summer 1963).
“Mechanism”: June 1959.
“Batsto”: Nov. 3, 1957. First appeared (as “Ghost Town, N. J.: Batsto”) in Chicago Choice, vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 1961). Ammons truncated the title to “Batsto” when he re-collected the poem in SP68 and CP51–71. Batsto Village is in Wharton State Forest, in southern New Jersey, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
“Mansion”: Apr. 19, 1959. First appeared in Poetry, Nov. 1960.
“Close-Up”: Aug. 10, 1958. First appeared in Poetry, Mar. 1959.
“Mountain Liar”: First appeared in Accent, vol. 18, no. 3 (Summer 1958).
“Prospecting”: Mar. 16, 1958. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 13, no. 3 (Autumn 1960).
“Jersey Cedars”: Mar. 16, 1958. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 13, no. 3 (Autumn 1960).
“Hardweed Path Going”: July 15, 1958. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 13, no. 3 (Autumn 1960).
“Bourn”: Nov. 22, 1958. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 13, no. 3 (Autumn 1960).
“Grassy Sound”: Sept. 21, 1958. First appeared in Poetry, Mar. 1959.
“Silver”: July 10, 1958. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 13, no. 3 (Autumn 1960). Silver was the Ammons family’s mule; other poems in which she appears include TTY (chiefly the “22 Dec:” section) and “Mule Song.”
“Concentrations”: Dec. 1959. First appeared in The Literary Review, vol. 5, no. 4 (Summer 1962).
“River”: c. 1955–60. First appeared (as “Canto 17:”) in The Hudson Review, vol. 13, no. 3 (Autumn 1960).
“Motion for Motion”: Apr. 23, 1961. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 16, no. 2 (Summer 1963).
“Identity”: Jan. 17, 1961. First appeared (as “Canto 29:”) in Impetus, no. 7 (Spring 1963).
“What This Mode of Motion Said”: Feb. 4, 1961.
“Still”: June 14, 1962. First appeared in The Emerson Review, vol. 1, no. 1 (Winter 1963).
“The Golden Mean”: June 1959. First appeared (as “Canto 13”) in Accent, vol. 20, no. 4 (Autumn 1960).
“Nucleus”: Feb. 6, 1961. In line 105, CP51–71’s “specialities” is corrected to “specialties,” following the text in ESL and Ammons’s TS for CP51–71. Line 5: The French explorer Jacques Cartier (1491–1557) claimed Canada for France. Line 19: The Laurentian was a passenger train that long ran between New York City and Montreal. Lines 28–30: Nick Bottom is a character in Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream—a play in which Theseus, Duke of Athens, declares that “as imagination bodies forth / The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen / Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name.” Lines 33–34: The French translates roughly to “the floor with the meeting, third floor, please.”
CORSONS INLET
Corsons Inlet was published by Cornell University Press in 1965.
“Visit”: July 2, 1961. First appeared in The Nation, Jan. 20, 1962.
“Moment”: Mar. 9, 1963. First appeared in Epoch, vol. 13, no. 1 (Fall 1963).
“Winter Scene”: Dec. 4, 1963. First appeared in Epoch, vol. 13, no. 3 (Spring 1964).
“Corsons Inlet”: Aug. 16, 1962. First appeared (as “A Nature Walk”) in The Hudson Review, vol. 16, no. 2 (Summer 1963). Corson’s Inlet is in southern New Jersey, just south of Ocean City; Corson’s Inlet State Park was established in 1969. Ammons reprinted this poem in SP68, CP51–71, SP77, and SP86, and each time, as in CI, he omitted the apostrophe in “Corson’s”; his omission is retained here.
When “Corsons Inlet” was reprinted in CP51–71, that book’s first three hardcover printings omitted the “of” in line 105. The error was corrected in the fourth and final hardcover printing of CP51–71 but appeared again in the 2001 paperback edition of the book, and was repeated in the Library of America Selected Poems (2006).
“Dunes”: Feb. 2, 1963. First appeared in Epoch, vol. 13, no. 1 (Fall 1963).
“Street Song”: Sept. 19, 1963. First appeared in Poetry, Sept. 1964.
“Lines”: Mar. 10, 1960. First appeared in Epoch, vol. 13, no. 1 (Fall 1963).
“Coon Song”: June 27, 1959. First appeared in Epoch, vol. 13, no. 1 (Fall 1963). Line 14: Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), a Russian author best known for his novels Notes from the Underground, Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov.
“Portrait”: Nov. 30, 1963. First appeared in The Nation, Nov. 2, 1964.
“Jungle Knot”: Feb. 11, 1961. First appeared in Discourse, vol. 6, no. 2 (Spring 1963). Line 21: William Beebe (1877–1962), a distinguished American naturalist.
“Dark Song”: Nov. 21, 1963. First appeared in Poetry, Sept. 1964.
“Resort”: First appeared in Epoch, vol. 13, no. 3 (Spring 1964).
“Upright”: Mar. 10, 1963. First appeared in Epoch, vol. 13, no. 1 (Fall 1963).
“Catalyst”: Sept. 15, 1960. First appeared in Poetry, June 1963.
“Loss”: June 1964. First appeared in The New York Times, Sept. 10, 1964.
“World”: Nov. 29, 1963. First appeared in Poetry, Sept. 1964.
“Butterflyweed”: Sept. 11, 1963. First appeared in Epoch, vol. 13, no. 3 (Spring 1964).
“Configurations”: June 1–3, 1963.
“Glass”: Apr. 23, 1963. First appeared in the Quarterly Review of Literature, vol. 13, nos. 1–2, 1964.
“Morning Glory”: Sept. 27, 1963.
“The Strait”: Apr. 16, 1960. First appeared in the Quarterly Review of Literature, vol. 13, nos. 1–2, 1964.
“Spindle”: Dec. 1, 1963. First appeared in The New York Times, May 9, 1964.
“The Yucca Moth”: July 1, 1962. First appeared in Shenandoah, vol. 15, no. 3 (Spring 1964).
“Anxiety”: Dec. 4, 1963. First appeared in Chicago Review, vol. 17, no. 1 (1964).
“Four Motions for the Pea Vines”: Jan. 20–Mar. 1962. First appeared in Chicago Review, vol. 17, no. 1 (1964).
“Hymn II”: Nov. 30, 1954. First appeared (as “Hymn V”) in Accent, vol. 18, no. 3 (Summer 1958). In CI, this poem appeared as part I of “Two Hymns.”
“Hymn III”: First appeared (as “Hymn X”) in Accent, vol. 18, no. 3 (Summer 1958). In CI, this poem appeared as part II of “Two Hymns.”
“Open”: Sept. 11, 1960. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 16, no. 2 (Summer 1963).
“Epiphany”: Fall 1959. First appeared in Poetry, Nov. 1960.
“Prodigal”: June 1959. Fi
rst appeared in Discourse, vol. 7, no. 1 (Winter 1964).
“Motion”: July 18, 1962. First appeared in Chelsea, no. 14 (Jan. 1964).
“The Misfit”: Feb. 15, 1961.
“The Watch”: Apr. 3, 1956. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 10, no. 3 (Autumn 1957).
“Libation”: Summer 1951. First appeared in the Quarterly Review of Literature, vol. 13, nos. 1–2 (1964).
“The Wide Land”: July 23, 1957. First appeared (as “In the Wide Land”) in Compass Review, no. 2 (Apr. 1958).
“Thaw”: May 1, 1958. First appeared in Accent, vol. 19, no. 3 (Summer 1959).
“Whose Timeless Reach”: Apr. 13, 1955. First appeared in Accent, vol. 16, no. 4 (Autumn 1956). See the note to “So I Said I Am Ezra” for more on the Ezra persona.
“Ritual for Eating the World”: July 19, 1957. First appeared in Accent, vol. 18, no. 3 (Summer 1958).
“Driving Through”: June 29, 1955. First appeared in Accent, vol. 16, no. 4 (Autumn 1956).
“March Song”: Mar. 8, 1957. First appeared in Partisan Review, vol. 26, no. 3 (Summer 1959).
“Gravelly Run”: Feb. 17, 1958. First appeared in Poetry, Nov. 1960. Gravelly Run is in southern New Jersey, northwest of Ocean City. Line 26: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), German Idealist philosopher. Ammons’s Cornell friend and colleague M. H. Abrams explains the relationships between German Idealist philosophy and English (and other) Romantic poetry in Natural Supernaturalism (1971).
TAPE FOR THE TURN OF THE YEAR
Tape for the Turn of the Year was published by Cornell University Press in 1965. Its dedicatees, the poets Josephine Jacobsen (1908–2003) and Elliott Coleman (1906–1980), were friends and supporters.
Ammons typed the poem on a long adding-machine tape, beginning on December 6, 1963, and ending on January 10, 1964. The tape’s width defined the maximum length of its lines, and its length defined the poem’s.
The Cornell archive holds three TSS of Tape: the original (the tape itself), here designated TS1, titled simply Today; a bound one, here designated TS2, titled Fugue for the Turn of the Year; and a hole-punched but unbound one, here designated TS3, with the typed title Fugue for the Turn of the Year corrected in pen to Tape for the Turn of the Year.
In a July 22, 1964, letter to Bernard Kendler at Cornell University Press, Ammons explains his reasons for deciding on the word Tape rather than Fugue. He writes, “Fugue doesn’t sound American: the word is squeezed in the mouth and finally swallowed. And something I read years ago has caused me to smart at analogies between music and poetry. . . . The word [Tape] is matter-of-fact, alliterates well with Turn—and summons such modern things as ticker tape, scotch tape, tape recorder, etc.” This letter, which includes other comments about the poem, is reprinted in full in An Image for Longing.
A copy of the book Ammons marked “corrected copy” includes, in addition to corrections of errors, a few minor revisions here and there. However, there is no indication of when he made those revisions, and there is no way to tell whether they represent firm judgments or merely briefly appealing possibilities. They did not appear in the poem’s 1993 reprint. This edition does not incorporate them, but they are documented among the notes below.
6 Dec:
Lines 13–37: Ammons here refers to various classical Greco-Roman figures and places associated with poetic inspiration: the Muse, any one of the sister goddesses thought to be the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory); Apollo, god of light, order, and poetry; Parnassus, a mountain in Greece thought by some to be the Muses’ home; the Pierian Spring in Macedonia, sacred to the Muses and thought to inspire whoever drank from it; Hippocrene, a fountain on Mount Helicon also regarded as sacred to the Muses and having the same inspiring properties as the Pierian Spring; and Pegasus, a winged horse associated with inspiration, since the Hippocrene was supposedly created when his hoof struck a rock on Mount Helicon. The unconscious is mentioned in line 29 as a nod to modern psychology’s understanding of creativity.
Lines 276–82: The events described take place in Book X of Homer’s Odyssey.
8 Dec:
Line 407–8: In what he labeled his “corrected copy” of Tape, Ammons strikes through “trunk,” “it,” and “turns,” and replaces them with “balls,” “they,” and “turn,” respectively.
9 Dec:
Lines 540–52: Pan Am Flight 214 crashed on December 8, 1963, after being hit by lightning while flying from Baltimore to Philadelphia. None aboard survived.
Lines 553–54: In Book IX of the Odyssey, Polyphemus the Cyclops (a one-eyed giant) eats members of Odysseus’s crew.
Line 554: In TS3 a colon at the end of the line appears to have been whited out and then rewritten in pen; the colon did not appear in publication. It is reinserted here to help clarify the fact that the clause ends with that line.
11 Dec:
Line 1360: The French phrase “sans merci” means “without mercy,” and appears in the title of one of John Keats’s best-known poems: “La Belle Dame sans Merci.”
Line 1393: The word “if” is corrected to “it,” following TS3. The book referred to is Expressions of Sea Level; two days later he celebrates its arrival.
13 Dec:
Line 1930: Regarding “my book,” see the note on line 1393, above.
Line 1985: Agathon (fifth century BC) was a Greek tragic poet and playwright whose work is now almost entirely lost. His victory at the festival of the Great Dionysia is the occasion of the banquet in Plato’s Symposium.
14 Dec:
Line 2154: In Ammons’s “corrected copy” of Tape, he contracts “we are” to “we’re.”
Line 2300: The word “their” is corrected to “theirs,” following TS3.
Line 2305: The word “life” is corrected to “lift,” following TS3.
17 Dec:
Lines 2620–24: In Greek mythology, Sisyphus is doomed in the afterlife to roll a great stone up a hill, only to have it immediately roll back down; the cycle repeats unendingly. He and his futile task are mentioned in Book XI of the Odyssey.
18 Dec:
Line 2916: “Chacun à chacun” is French for “each to each.”
19 Dec:
Line 3111: Praxagora is the heroine of A Parliament of Women, by the Greek playwright Aristophanes (fifth–fourth century BC).
26 Dec:
Line 3497: The art historian Bernard Berenson (1865–1959) specialized in the Italian Renaissance.
28 Dec:
Line 4146: The word “thallopyte” is corrected to “thallophyte,” following TS3.
30 Dec:
Lines 4411–15: William Carlos Williams had died earlier that year, on March 4.
Line 4478: A colon is inserted at the end of the line, following TS3.
3 Jan:
Line 5669: A closing single quotation mark is here corrected to a closing double quotation mark.
8 Jan:
Lines 6252–53: In his “corrected copy,” Ammons strikes through “it’s out of order to / be passionate with” and writes “passion is out of order / with.”
Line 6328: In TS1, TS2, and TS3, the “1:31 pm” section begins thus:
Johnson’s “State of
the Union” address:
unity & diversity: how
to have both: must:
it’s Coleridge’s
definition of a poem:
The reference to Lyndon Johnson’s speech was deleted for the book.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge comments in many places on the aesthetic value of balance between “unity & diversity.” One such place is Chapter XIV of his Biographia Literaria, where he writes that “a legitimate poem . . . must be one, the parts of which mutually support and explain each other.”
9 Jan:
Line 6555: In his “corrected copy,” Ammons strikes “where the banks also flow” in favor of “the banks flow also.”
Lines 6675–82: When Ammons writes that “before long / the red edge will / rise / from the floor,�
�� he is referring to a ¼-inch-wide band of red ink along the right edge of the tape, beginning about three feet from the end. At the end of line 6933, the beginning of the parenthetical exclamation “(there’s / the red ink / turned into the light!),” he types the word “there’s” through the beginning of that red edge.
NORTHFIELD POEMS
Northfield Poems was published by Cornell University Press in 1966; its dedicatees are Ammons’s father, who died that year, and his father’s third wife, who is not to be confused with Ammons’s Aunt Blanche mentioned in section 114 of Glare. (His mother had died in 1950.) The book is named for Northfield, New Jersey, where he lived from 1952 to 1954 and then again from 1959 to 1964, before moving to Ithaca, New York. Nearly all of the poems in NP date from his second residence in Northfield.
“Kind”: Aug. 31, 1964. First appeared in The Trojan Horse, vol. 5, no. 3 (Nov. 1964).
“Height”: Sept. 1, 1964. First appeared in The Trojan Horse, vol. 5, no. 3 (Nov. 1964).
“Joshua Tree”: Mar. 23, 1958. First appeared in Poetry, Mar. 1959.
“Reflective”: Aug. 29, 1963. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 17, no. 4 (Winter 1965).
“Landscape with Figures”: Nov. 15, 1963. First appeared in Poetry, July 1965.
“The Constant”: July 11, 1962. First appeared in the Quarterly Review of Literature, vol. 13, nos. 1–2 (1964).
“Contingency”: Sept. 26, 1963. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 17, no. 4 (Winter 1965).
“One:Many”: June 1962. First appeared in Chelsea no. 17 (Aug. 1965). Line 86: “Out of many, one” is a translation of E pluribus unum, the Latin motto that appears on the Great Seal of the United States.
“Halfway”: Oct. 20, 1963. First appeared in Poetry, July 1965.
“Interference”: July 8, 1964. First appeared in The Hudson Review, vol. 17, no. 4 (Winter 1965).
“Saliences”: Aug. 18, 1962. First appeared in TriQuarterly, no. 5 (1966).
“Trap”: Sept. 27, 1963. First appeared in The New York Times, Mar. 21, 1965.
“The Foot-Washing”: June 12, 1959. First appeared in Kayak, no. 3 (1965).
“Recovery”: July 7, 1964. First appeared in The New York Times, Sept. 30, 1964.