A.R. Ammons - 1926
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Read another essay on Archie Ammons by North Carolina student Beth L.
I. Background, Education and Professional Life Outside Whiteville, North Carolina, Archie Randolph
Ammons was born on February 18, 1926 on his family's small farm. He served in the Navy during World War II when he began to write his poetry.
Ammons attended Wake Forest University where he majored in science and received a bachelor's degree. He has had a number of jobs throughout his life. He was a real estate
salesman, an editor, manager for his father-in-law's glassware company in New Jersey, and an elementary school principal in Cape Hatteras. After a year as a principal, Ammons and
his wife Phyllis moved to California for Ammons to do graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley. Finally, in 1964, Ammons began to teach at Cornell University.
Shortly after receiving the position at Cornell University, Ammons' poetry was becoming a source of income. In the late 1960s, Ammons was finally being recognized for his work. He
received many awards including the Bollingen, the National Book Award (twice), the Frost Medal, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Many of his award-winning books embody Collected Poems 1951-1971
(1972 - National Book Award), Sphere (1974 - Bollingen Prize), Coast of Trees (1981 - National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry), and Garbage
(1993 - the National Book Award and the Library of Congress' Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize). Ammons' poetry covers four basic interests: money, poetry, sex and death. He states that
these interests "cover pretty much everything". His poetry, like Robert Frost's, concentrates deeply on nature. He has been a true American original poet throughout his
literary career. Ammons has recently suffered from hematoma and brain seizures that resulted in emergency surgery. Ammons now lives in Ithaca, New York where he is still a
Goldwin Smith Professor at Cornell University and has been since 1971. II. Ammons' Nature Poetry "Storm" "Elegy for a Jet Pilot" "Runoff" III. Literary Works Poetry
Ommateum, with Doxology (1955) Garbage (1993) *National Book Award and the Library of Congress's Rebekah Johnson
Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry The North Carolina Poems (1994) Prose Set in Motion: Essays, Interviews, and Dialogues (1996) Edited by Zofia Burr. IV. A.R. Ammons on the Web
This poem talks about the condition of a tree after a storm. It goes into detail about the
roots, branches and leaves in which the storm affected them. At the end of the poem, he indicates the tree will continue its life in a different shape which will be stabilized by its live
root system therefore in following years, the leaves will have a "safe, tested place" to fall did the leaves of the original tree.
This poem talks about a pilot taking off which leads to the pilot losing control of the plane after being airborne; then the plane loses power and crashes down, hitting pine trees,
huckleberry bushes, laurel, and decends to the ground leaving a path of broken vegetation behind him. The plane then comes to "an unbelievably particular stop" - crashes.
This poem talks about a disgusting stream cluttered with trash which leads to a river. The river gains strength and size and after some distance begins to slow down and become
cleaner finally emptying into a "soggy small marsh" where the river has completed its journey and is completely different from its original state.
Expresstions of Sea Level (1964)
Corsons Inlet (1965)
Tape for the Turn of the Year (1965)
Northfield Poems (1966)
Selected Poems (1968)
Uplands (1970)
Briefings: Poems Small and Easy (1971)
Collected Poems: 1951-1971 (1972) *National Book Award
Sphere: The Form of a Motion (1974) *Bollingen Prize
Diversifications (1975)
The Snow Poems (1977)
Highgate Road (1977)
The Selected Poems: 1951-1977 (1977)
Selected Longer Poems (1980)
A Coast of Trees (1981) *National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry
Worldly Hopes (1982)
Lake Effect Country (1983)
The Selected Poems: Expanded Edition (1986)
Sumerian Vistas (1987)
The Really Short Poems (1991)
Brink Road (1996)
Glare (1997)
http://www.arts.cornell.edu/newsletr/fall98/ammons.htm
http://www.poets.org/poems/Prose.cfm?prmID=1800
http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/htm/04517_m.htm
This essay was submitted by a student of Rita Achenbach, a teacher at Fuquay-Varina High School in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina.