Archibald Randolph Ammons (February 18, 1926 – February 25, 2001) was an American
poet and professor of English at
Cornell University. Ammons published nearly thirty collections of poems in his lifetime.[1] Revered for his impact on American
romantic poetry, Ammons received several major awards for his work, including two
National Book Awards for Poetry, one in 1973 for Collected Poems and another in 1993 for Garbage.[1][2]
Poetic themes
Literary critics have associated Ammons with earlier poets of the American
romantic tradition, such as
Ralph Waldo Emerson and
Walt Whitman.[2] In line with these romantic roots, Ammons's poetry explores the individual soul through its connection to quotidian life and the natural world.[2] Nevertheless, Ammons exhibits several qualities that distinguish him from his peers and predecessors. With a deep knowledge of natural phenomena, Ammons is noted for wielding a wide lexicon of scientific terms.[3] He is also regarded for his witty––and sometimes coarse–humor, which balances out the gravity of his transcendentalist themes.[3]
Life
Ammons grew up on a tobacco farm near
Whiteville, North Carolina, in the southeastern part of the state. He served as a sonar operator in the U.S. Navy during World War II, stationed on board the
USS Gunason, a destroyer escort.[4] After the war, Ammons attended
Wake Forest University, majoring in biology. Graduating in 1949, he served as a principal and teacher at Hattaras Elementary School later that year and also married Phyllis Plumbo.[5] He received an M.A. in English from the
University of California, Berkeley.[6]
In 1964, Ammons joined the faculty of
Cornell University, eventually becoming Goldwin Smith Professor of English and Poet in Residence. He retired from Cornell in 1998.[7][8] His students who went on to achieve acclaim as poets include
Alice Fulton,
Ann Loomis Silsbee, and Jerald Bullis.[9]
When Ammons arrived at Cornell University in 1964 to teach creative writing, he had not yet finished his master's degree at the University of California, Berkeley.[12] While somewhat self-conscious about his lack of academic pedigree compared to his colleagues, Ammons established himself quickly by completing and publishing six well-received volumes and earning tenure in 1969.[13] Ammons met literary critic
Harold Bloom, who visited Cornell in 1968 as a fellow of the Society for the Humanities.[13] Bloom is often credited with elevating Ammons's reputation in his early career, and the two maintained a lifelong relationship, frequently corresponding on both personal and literary subjects.[13] Ammons also developed a close relationship with poet
Robert Morgan, who joined the Cornell English Department 1971 and remained there alongside Ammons for nearly three decades.[14] Both from North Carolina, Ammons and Morgan bonded over their similar upbringings; and though they embraced distinct poetic styles, the two poets praised each other's work throughout their careers.[14]
In step with his thematic focus on nature, Ammons drew inspiration for his work from the surrounding landscape of
Ithaca, New York. His poems "Cascadilla Falls" and "Triphammer Bridge" pay tribute to outdoor landmarks in the area.[15]
Ammons commonly writes in two- or three-line stanzas, in which lines are unrhymed and strongly
enjambed.[22] Some of Ammons's poems are as short as one to two lines—a form known as
monostich.[23] Others, like Ammons's book-length poems Sphere, Tape for the Turn of the Year, and Garbage, are hundreds of lines long.[24]
Ammons is noted for his idiosyncratic, minimalist approach to punctuation.[2] The colon is Ammons "signature" punctuation mark, which he employs in many contexts to divide clauses while delaying a definitive end.[22] Leery of terminal punctuation, Ammons avoids ending poems with periods. Instead, some poems end in ellipses, or in no punctuation at all.[22]
Ommateum, with Doxology. Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1955. Reprinted, with Preface by Roger Gilbert, Cornell University, by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York - London, 2006.
ISBN978-0-393-33054-0 (paperback)
Expressions of Sea Level. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1964.
Bosh and Flapdoodle: Poems. New York: Norton, 2005.
ISBN0-393-05952-9
Selected Poems. David Lehman, ed. New York: Library of America, 2006.
ISBN1-931082-93-6
The North Carolina Poems. New, expanded edition. Frankfort, KY: Broadstone Books, 2010.
ISBN978-0-9802117-2-6
The Mule Poems. Fountain, NC: R. A. Fountain, 2010.
ISBN0-9842102-0-2 (chapbook)
The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons, Volume 1 1955-1977; Volume 2 1978-2005: Edited by Robert M. West; Introduction by Helen Vendler. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 2017
ISBN9780393070132 hardcover vol. 1;
ISBN9780393254891 hardcover vol. 2
Prose
Set in Motion: Essays, Interviews, and Dialogues (1996)
An Image for Longing: Selected Letters and Journals of A.R. Ammons, 1951–1974. Ed. Kevin McGuirk. Victoria, BC: ELS Editions, 2014.
ISBN978-1550584561
Critical studies and reviews of Ammons's work
Bloom, Harold (1971), The Ringers in the Tower: Studies in Romantic Tradition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
ISBN9780226060491
Diacritics 3 (1973). An entire "essays on Ammons" issue.
"A. R. Ammons", Poetry Foundation, 2011,
archived from the original on April 23, 2016, retrieved April 18, 2011
Wilson, Emily Herring (January 20, 2011),
"The A.R. Ammons I Knew", Wake Forest Magazine, retrieved April 18, 2011
Bevis, Matthew (March 7, 2019).
"Gravity's Smoothest Dream". London Review of Books. 41 (5): 31–35. Retrieved April 8, 2019. Review of A.R. Ammons, The Complete Poems.
^
abcGilbert, Roger (March 1, 2012). "I Went to the Summit: The Literary Bromance of A.R. Ammons and Harold Bloom". Genre. 45 (1): 167–193.
doi:
10.1215/00166928-1507074.
^
ab"National Book Awards – 1973".
National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-04-07. (With acceptance speech by Ammons and essay by Christopher Shannon from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog—one "Appreciation" for Ammons's two awards.)
A. R. Ammons Papers 1944–1987 Southern Historical Collection, Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina