The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2 Read online

  Summer Place

  GLARE (1997)

  Part One: Strip

  1 (“wdn’t it be silly to be serious, now . . .”)

  2 (“where is one to find room enough . . .”)

  3 (“I keep proving I’m not god’s gift . . .”)

  4 (“hear me, O Lord . . .”)

  5 (“seems like every winter . . .”)

  6 (“the highest place, though . . .”)

  7 (“when I was young . . .”)

  8 (“if Homer can nod . . .”)

  9 (“the hills are alive with indifference . . .”)

  10 (“don’t go on about it . . .”)

  11 (“the man four-legged with arm braces . . .”)

  12 (“do things close up or close down . . .”)

  13 (“the spirit is universal . . .”)

  14 (“I struggle on in this pointless war . . .”)

  15 (“money, enhancing the fluency of negotiation . . .”)

  16 (“I don’t think things go round . . .”)

  17 (“where do poems come from . . .”)

  18 (“I need to get a picture . . .”)

  19 (“how big is a drop of water . . .”)

  20 (“it’s so cold this morning . . .”)

  21 (“I tell myself to think happy thoughts . . .”)

  22 (“if you miss life and get old . . .”)

  23 (“lawsey-dawsey . . .”)

  24 (“I am so ill-stanchioned myself . . .”)

  25 (“it scares me to think that . . .”)

  26 (“fracture the mirror . . .”)

  27 (“how wonderful to be able to write . . .”)

  28 (“two of the birch trees . . .”)

  29 (“I know most people like . . .”)

  30 (“oh, we go to Owego some Sundays . . .”)

  31 (“my hands that in their motions . . .”)

  32 (“I’m glad I don’t have fifty years . . .”)

  33 (“I feel it is so necessary . . .”)

  34 (“I see the eye-level silver shine . . .”)

  35 (“the poet’s wandering finds . . .”)

  36 (“she said, it’s hard to have hope . . .”)

  37 (“one types to please and appease . . .”)

  38 (“logs, limbs, and branches lying by . . .”)

  39 (“the petunias are, this morning . . .”)

  40 (“I guess it’s because of the downward . . .”)

  41 (“the strong want to live on the edge . . .”)

  42 (“can you make nothing interesting . . .”)

  43 (“sometimes I get the feeling . . .”)

  44 (“every now and then I drop a bead . . .”)

  45 (“will I will the will to go on . . .”)

  46 (“the yellow leaves left . . .”)

  47 (“battalions of leaves routed . . .”)

  48 (“missed by every movement . . .”)

  49 (“if I don’t know what it is . . .”)

  50 (“life has left me beaten up . . .”)

  51 (“this summer the weeds . . .”)

  52 (“breaking up the hang up . . .”)

  53 (“so here I am fist-diddling . . .”)

  54 (“in this life if you scramble . . .”)

  55 (“if I say I did it, did I do it . . .”)

  56 (“one good thing about being too late . . .”)

  57 (“stars, too, are often twinkle-eyed . . .”)

  58 (“you dragass around . . .”)

  59 (“we’ll just be here while we’re here . . .”)

  60 (“it’s a brisk, bright fall day . . .”)

  61 (“see a penny, pick it up . . .”)

  62 (“have I put my input in . . .”)

  63 (“sixty years ago, I used to hear . . .”)

  64 (“well, it’s true . . .”)

  65 (“when the trees tug . . .”)

  Part Two: Scat Scan

  66 (“well, it’s true, clarity is in the extremes . . .”)

  67 (“you scan the surface . . .”)

  68 (“hang on—oh, hang on—to our frailty . . .”)

  69 (“I confess my confessions never concern . . .”)

  70 (“no use planning for the future . . .”)

  71 (“it is so much easier to become known . . .”)

  72 (“I tell my poor pitiful graduating MFA poets . . .”)

  73 (“no, I carry hods, I’m a sideloader, cement mixer . . .”)

  74 (“clamp the c (c-clamp?) of clog on log . . .”)

  75 (“these cold days in May give me the woolly-willies . . .”)

  76 (“your insidious eloquence makes me seek . . .”)

  77 (“truth persists, if at all . . .”)

  78 (“the rot of some deep-wasting roots . . .”)

  79 (“it is hilarious how sad the world is . . .”)

  80 (“you think if you say you’re going to die . . .”)

  81 (“trust no one . . .”)

  82 (“a hip pain, a swollen gum, eyes that stick . . .”)

  83 (“you’ve probably heard the one . . .”)

  84 (“consciousness is a kind of planet . . .”)

  85 (“I don’t actually like the smell . . .”)

  86 (“Love Poem”)

  87 (“Old Age”)

  88 (“my father-in-heaven is my father . . .”)

  89 (“whatever happens now . . .”)

  90 (“if the world were not commonly perceived . . .”)

  91 (“the news of the week . . .”)

  92 (“you could wish you were dead . . .”)

  93 (“in time all the stories become the same story . . .”)

  94 (“live unknown and when you go . . .”)

  95 (“these are the longest days . . .”)

  96 (“what will time, if time alone will tell, tell . . .”)

  97 (“when I’m interviewed . . .”)

  98 (“at a roadstand, in Dryden . . .”)

  99 (“I asked C.A. what she thought about . . .”)

  100 (“all my life I thought a swig . . .”)

  101 (“I don’t care what becomes of me now . . .”)

  102 (“if results tell the story . . .”)

  103 (“how dangerous . . .”)

  104 (“Uncle John was a cap’m at the beach . . .”)

  105 (“nature poetry, nature poetry . . .”)

  106 (“what is the difference . . .”)

  107 (“Glenn (inventively—and wittily . . .”)

  108 (“the past lifts . . .”)

  109 (“it’s bad news in the OK corral . . .”)

  110 (“if you’re constipated . . .”)

  111 (“when I heard the learned astonisher . . .”)

  112 (“in the middle of the piddle . . .”)

  113 (“can one be powerful . . .”)

  114 (“the world, so populous . . .”)

  115 (“I just can’t buy the bi- words . . .”)

  116 (“some notes: buy morning shoes . . .”)

  117 (“what are the structures of upholding . . .”)

  FUCKING RIGHT (1999)

  Fucking Right

  Rough Estimate

  Old Sweet

  Coffee Shoppe

  Getting It on Straight

  Weeding

  Bong

  Bad Goods

  Foreshortening

  Outdoor Plumbing

  BOSH AND FLAPDOODLE (2005)

  Fasting

  Reverse Reserve and You Have Reverse

  Surface Effects

  Aubade

  Oil Ode

  America

  In View of the Fact

  Get Over It

  Tail Tales

  Fuel to the Fire, Ice to the Floe

  Suet Pudding, Spotted Dick

  Focal Lengths

  Sibley Hall

  Good God

  Genetic Counseling

  Hooliganism

  Slacking Off

  Quibbling the Colossal

  Informing Dynamics

  Pyroclastic Flows

 
; Odd Man Out

  Squall Lines

  John Henry

  Rogue Elephant

  Mouvance

  Called Into Play

  Back-Burnerd

  A Few Acres of Shiny Water

  [They said today would be partly cloudy]

  Feint Praise

  Surfacing Surface Effects

  Free One, Get One By

  Dumb Clucks

  Sucking Flies

  Balsam Firs

  Tree Limbs Down

  Wetter Beather

  The Gushworks

  Body Marks

  Yonderwards

  Depressed Areas

  Dishes and Dashes

  Auditions

  Between Each Song

  Mina de Oro

  Widespread Implications

  Above the Fray Is Only Thin Air

  Home Fires

  Pudding Bush Sopping Wet

  Spew

  Vomit

  Thoughts

  Spit

  Lineage

  Now Then

  Shit Face

  Surprising Elements

  Out From Under

  The Whole Situation

  Rattling Freight Lines

  That’s What I Just Got Through Saying

  It Doesn’t Hold Water

  Tom Fool

  Ringadingding

  I Wouldn’t Go So Far As to Say That

  Thrown for a Loop

  Wrong Road

  Way Down Upon the Woodsy Roads

  APPENDIX A: POEMS PUBLISHED DURING AMMONS’S LIFETIME BUT UNCOLLECTED

  It Is As Far

  11-25-56

  Hymn (“Make lean the vowels of my lips . . .”)

  Slippery Log Swamp

  Canto 46

  Canto 24

  View

  Sung Reassertions

  Connection

  Community

  A Birth of Winter

  Urban Rage

  All Set

  Confessional Poem

  For Andrew Wyeth

  Dinah

  Chinaberry

  Diner

  Address

  Untelling

  Between

  Mid-Morning

  Necessity

  Scientific Breakdown

  Convergences Downward

  Self

  Attending

  Interim

  David

  Arete

  Away

  A Bit of the Bubbly for Ep Fogel

  An Improvisation for Goldwin Smith

  For Robert Penn Warren

  Man’s Nature

  The Grave Is

  An Improvisation for Fran Bullis

  Delineation

  Transcending

  Fire Going

  Marble

  One Extreme to the Other

  Thoroughfaring

  Spring Lines

  Maple

  Quick Song

  Spiritual Progress

  The Gathering

  Plain Divisions

  Taking Place

  Breaking for the Broken

  Could Be

  Marking Time

  Noted Imposition

  Summer Fashion

  A Priori

  Reticulum of Indirection

  Inclinations

  Why Is It Always the Way It Always Is

  Motion Which Disestablishes Organizes Everything

  Forerunners

  Slights of Sight

  Rosalie

  Generally Clear with Scattered Slippery Spots

  Saving Account

  Spot Check (“The least boring way . . .”)

  Commissary

  Time after Time

  The Surprise of an Ending

  Work Notes

  Castaways

  Settlements

  Winter Crop

  Countercurrency

  Time Being

  Religious Matters

  An Improvisation for Angular Momentum

  An Improvisation for the Pieties of Modernism

  Harry Caplan

  Oops

  Following Tragedy

  Opinion’s Pinions

  For Emily Wilson from a Newcomer

  The Sale Sale

  Turning Things Out Good

  Alligator Holes Down Along About Old Dock

  Somers Point

  White Echo

  Pileup

  Ping Jockeys

  Keeping Track

  Cornell’s Wee Stinkie

  Candle Lit

  Emerging Curves

  Sumerian Vistas

  Mucilage

  Clabberbabble

  Birthday Poem to My Wife

  Shot Glass

  Embedded Storms

  Periodontal Abscess

  Spills

  A Regular Mess

  APPENDIX B: POEMS POSTHUMOUSLY PUBLISHED

  Mule

  For Edwin Wilson

  For Emily Wilson

  Making Fields

  High Heaven

  MotionShape

  Woman

  Red Edges

  Core Sample

  Late Scene

  Speaking

  Good as Done

  Contested Ground

  Right Call

  Religious Feeling

  Spot Check (“We old people sit . . .”)

  The Skimpy Side of Nothing

  Other News

  Rap Sheet

  Frumpy Cronies

  Shuffled Marbles

  Don’t Rush on My Account

  Run Ragged

  Quanta

  NOTES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INDEX OF TITLES

  INDEX OF FIRST LINES

  PREFACE TO VOLUME 2

  The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons aims to offer authoritative texts of all the poems for which Archie Randolph Ammons arranged publication, as well as a body of mostly late work that first saw print in the decade following his death. The edition’s two volumes thus present the 966 poems gathered in his books, including those from three limited-edition chapbooks most of his readers have likely never seen. Whereas the first volume begins with his debut collection, Ommateum with Doxology (1955), and ends with the long poem The Snow Poems and the chapbook Highgate Road (both published in 1977), this second volume begins with the chapbook Six-Piece Suite (1978) and continues through the posthumous collection Bosh and Flapdoodle (2005). This volume also offers two appendices with 127 previously published but hitherto uncollected poems: Appendix A consists of 103 poems that Ammons placed in journals or other venues, and Appendix B adds 24 more that (thanks to the efforts of some of his colleagues and collaborators) appeared in print over the decade following his death.

  In this volume and its counterpart, the text of each poem has been established after careful consideration of the manuscripts and other prepublication materials in the two major archives of Ammons’s writing: the Archie Ammons Papers held by the Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, and the A. R. Ammons Papers in the Reid and Susan Overcash Literary Collection, a holding of the Special Collections Division of East Carolina University’s J. Y. Joyner Library. Also helpful were the A. R. Ammons Papers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Southern Historical Collection, and the poet’s marked copies of his books, held by his widow, the late Phyllis Ammons, and their son, John Ammons.

  The archives include many interesting unpublished poems, drafts, and fragments that deserve to see print—and perhaps in the future there will be an edition dedicated to that unpublished manuscript material, clearly presenting it as such. In this edition, however, only two previously unpublished poems appear, both in Volume I: “Finishing Up,” from 1985, serves as a proem to the entire edition, and “Bookish Bookseller,” an undated comment on Sphere: The Form of a Motion, is included with the notes to that long poem.

  As a rule, this edition defers to Ammons’s final judgment, insofar as th
at could be determined, with regard to each poem. Those revised and reprinted in his retrospective volumes (the three Selected Poems published during his lifetime, plus the Selected Longer Poems, the Collected Poems 1951–1971, and The Really Short Poems of A. R. Ammons) appear here as sequenced in the books where they originally appeared, but as revised for those retrospectives.

  There are three small but noteworthy exceptions to that deference, and they appear in this volume. The three are in books published in the 1990s, a time when the poet’s health problems may have contributed to lapses of critical focus. One occurs in section 11 of Garbage (1993); one in “Day Ghosts,” from Brink Road (1996); and one in section 67 of Glare (1997). In each case, this edition rejects a minor but marring revision and restores the construction the revision replaced or modified. For details, see the notes on those poems.

  For his Collected Poems 1951–1971, the three Selected Poems, and the Selected Longer Poems, Ammons ordered his work chronologically, by date of first composition; he seems to have thought that date the one most worth preserving, as he very rarely recorded dates of revision. Although he did not date some of his earliest poems, nearly all those from his second book, Expressions of Sea Level (1964), through Collected Poems 1951–1971 (1972) are dated precisely, with the month, the day, and the year. The poems of his later books, however, are dated more sporadically: exact dates are attached to many, but many others have no dates at all. For this edition, then, arrangement of all the poems by chronology of composition was impossible. Especially since most of the early books have been out of print for some time, the best approach seemed to be to present the poems as originally sequenced, book by book.

  No poem appears twice in this edition: in Volume I, therefore, only the poems first collected in Collected Poems 1951–1971 represent that book, and the same is true of The Really Short Poems (1990) in this volume. Readers interested in considering the sequencing of all the poems in those two books will find that information in the notes to them. The sequences of poems in the three Selected Poems and the Selected Longer Poems, books that include no previously uncollected work, are given at the notes’ conclusion in this volume.

  Each poem Ammons dated is here followed immediately by the year of composition, outside parentheses; the notes give the complete date, as specifically as the poet recorded it. Each poem that appeared in a periodical, anthology, or other venue before being collected in one of the poet’s books is followed here by the year of that first publication, inside parentheses; the notes give detailed information about those appearances. Ammons’s books sometimes credit with first publication little magazines not indexed by print or electronic resources; a few of those have remained elusive, and so for half a dozen poems the notes give only the title of the venue the poet credited.

  Lines are numbered here for convenient reference, but the poems sometimes complicate the issue of what should be included in that numbering. As one would expect, titles are generally not included in the line count, but the titles of poems within poems are counted. In poems Ammons divided into numbered sections, the section-heading numbers are generally not counted—but if a poem within a poem is divided into numbered sections, those numbers are counted. The long poems sometimes use special characters to mark off passages; some seem no more than boundary markers, but some invite further consideration, and so all are included in the line numbering.