I have been reading and trying to come to terms with A.R. Ammons The Selected Poems for nearly two weeks now. I have never been introduced to his poetry in any of the many poetry classes I have taken, so I am a little surprised at how much I like his poetry. How could he have been overlooked by so many people I admired?
I’m also a little taken aback at how difficult it is to understand some of the poems. I’ve read and reread several poems and still don’t feel like I have a good grasp of some of them. I’m going to have to get to a good college library to find some in-depth analysis of his poems before I would really feel comfortable discussing some of the poems I like very much. That said, the poems seem well worth the effort it takes to understand them. Ammons is a nature poet of the order of Walt Whitman, Theodore Roethke or Gary Snyder, all personal favorites. And, though his vision is similar to these poets, it also seems quite unique.
Perhaps it is so difficult to follow Ammons’ vision because it is never, at least as far as I can tell, completed, as suggested in the closing lines from “Corsons Inlet,” one of his more famous poems.
I see narrow orders, limited tightness, but will
not run to that easy victory:
still around the looser, wider forces work:
I will try
to fasten into order enlarging grasps of disorder, widening scope, but enjoying the freedom that
Scope eludes my grasp, that there is no finality of vision,
that I have perceived nothing completely,
that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk.
Ammon obviously sees a lack of “finality of vision” as a positive thing because it forces him to constantly see the world as new and fresh. I tend to agree with that; once we think we can “define” something, we no longer need to consider it seriously. There is, however, much more here. He suggests that it is an “easy victory,” and thus a false victory, to suggest that there is a vision that can encompass all “enlarging groups of disorder” that do not fit within the theory. Still, he does not give up in his attempt to “fasten into order enlarging grasps of disorder.”
On one level, Ammons’ poems are so easily read that they almost seem transparent:
Reflective
I found a
weed
that had a
mirror in it
and that
mirror
looked in at
a mirror
in
me that
had a
weed in it
Poems like this remind me a lot of Roethke and his ability to find deeper meaning in the most common elements of nature, as he did in “Weed Pulling.” These poems seem Zen-like in their simplicity, yet a reflection of a deeper truth.
Then there are simple poems like “Mansion” that emphasize Ammons’ commitment to the spirit, and the spirit’s symbol, the wind:
Mansion
So it came time
for me to cede myself
and I chose
the wind
to be delivered to
The wind was glad
and said it needed all
the body
it could get
to show its motions with
and wanted to know
willingly as I hoped it would
if it could do
something in return
to show its gratitude
When the tree of my bones
rises from the skin I said
come and whirlwinding
stroll my dust
around the plain
so I can see
how the ocotillo does
and how saguaro-wren is
and when you fall
with evening
fall with me here
where we can watch
the closing up of day
and think how morning breaks
Though this certainly does not seem like the traditional image of resurrection, there is definitely the feeling of going on beyond death, even if it is merely as part of the wind, rather than as a separate identity. Somehow the light-hearted tone of the poem, “The wind was glad/ and said it needed all/ the body/ it could get/ to show its motions with,” makes the idea of death seem less foreboding. And this, in turn, is reinforced by the idea that the narrator will get to revisit the very places he was fondest of while living.
I enjoy reading Ammons even at this level, though I think his best poems are much deeper than this.While demanding much from the reader, his best poetry is as interesting as anything I’ve read. I’ll get to some of those poems tomorrow.