The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2

by A. R. Ammons

  standing recalcitrant in its own nasty massiveness,

  bowing to no one, nonpatronizing and ungrateful:

  I don’t know why: maybe I’m just tired of the world’s

  20inroads, the small invasions where my little landscapes

  are stripped, defoliated, re-arranged:

  or tired of being put upon by this and that person’s

  demand and need and having to swelter inside

  with the moral melting of whether to do this and that

  25or not: this morning, I got a letter from this

  Arkansas lady who runs a bookstore she says isn’t

  doing too well, and she wants me to sign a stack of

  bookplates to help my books move: I already last

  year signed a bunch of my poems she had typed up on

  30separate cards: I haven’t forgotten I did that and

  here she is back again: am I being played for a sucker:

  if I’m being played for a sucker, which is the thing

  to do, blink and be generous and help her even if she’s

  prevailing upon me or set the stage that I’m on

  35to her and throw everything in the trash: it’s

  not doing the thing, it’s being put on the spot and

  having (being made) to make a choice: that energy

  of decision is costly: you can’t just make one

  decision and follow through, every decision is

  40different: it isn’t easy, what would you do: then

  there are the recommendations, ooh, la, la, the letters

  of recommendation! no postage, no envelopes, no forms

  _________

  filled out—just the command, send a letter of

  recommendation to so and so: or send a dozen: still

  45no stamps, no envelopes, no forms filled out: you

  get the picture: so thinking of an imagined land, I

  thought of a big gritty poem that would just stand

  there and spit, accommodating itself to nothing and

  too disfigured to be approached, no one

  50able to imagine what line to take: and not necessarily

  being interesting enough to invite anybody to read it:

  nothing turns people off like complaining, they get

  enough of it doing their own, so why not have a

  complaining poem: that could core your reality and

  55stack up the peelings: Gary and I just went over

  to check out Corsons Inlet: there were a lot of bugs:

  (fellow said they said on the radio Fargo, North

  Dakota (I thought that was in Nebraska) had a foot

  of rain and the Red River, can you imagine, flooded):

  60this is not going to be another one of those free

  association poems: this one is going to be all about

  complaining, so there’s no point in getting limbered

  up for heavy swerves, this is going to run right down

  the centrality, clickety-clack: at Corsons Inlet they

  65had the Least, Arctic, and Common Tern, but the Least

  were raising the most babies and the most hell: they

  made a community project of hovering, circling around,

  diving, and screeching: but we found the young about

  hiding in the stalks of compass grass and right out

  _________

  70on the clam-shell white sand were indentations,

  nests, one or two eggs in each: we walked

  crisply on the clam shells so as not to step on the

  eggs: then we stopped at a place for a dollar’s worth

  of ice tea, two fifty-cent sizes: it sure was hot out

  75there on the sea plains but the ocean has added another

  seventy-five yards to the headland: (the same land it’s

  been subtracting from the north end of the island where

  bulwarks and jettys are doing very little

  to retain the retaining walls:) how does the ocean

  80get into these persistent notions: it’s hard not to get

  interested in something: there seemed sheer strength

  in the numbers of blackflies waving over and sucking on

  the inlet strand, multitudes, you kick them up before

  you like sand or, more persistingly, like fog: you know

  85they all have to be doing the same thing approximately

  because there’re too many of them to be doing different

  things: just like the sand-ripples on the headland, how

  could you design something that all looks alike but every

  one is different: a studious drawingboard: same with

  90the lacework castings of the sandworms, a filigree

  incalculable, though pretty much the same: so it’s all

  there, who wants to be stunned by it over and over:

  desire is incredible anywhere and I have a lot myself:

  insatiable because unsatisfied: yep: burning all the

  95time doing time in the dungeon: if it got loose it would fire

  off an acre of trees: this is my worst complaint, that

  _________

  desire often has to be held back and stanched: but

  holding back gives you plenty of energy to complain with:

  look for a long piece: a windstorm just struck up

  100a sandstorm here, the winds going quite precisely from

  easy-going to whistling, a sharp change, hard enough

  to walk off with a tin shack: and the storm so

  fast, it seems to have no lightning in it—and

  no rain, a blower, mixing too many levels perhaps

  105for charges to build up: but somewhere back there in

  the west is a nucleus, storm center or cell,

  for all this commotion: I hope there will be some rain

  to lay the dust: but how nice to be cooled off: ninety

  degree days are not as nice as less than ninety degree

  110days: nice to see trash rise, swirl, slam against

  houses and linepoles: beach chairs bloom woven

  bottoms and kilter off like the awkwardest bird

  across the beach: sand in flumes spills like water

  down into the surf, frying in a frying: I’m in this

  115place and everybody is having this banquet, except me,

  I have this dry crust I’m nibbling on: so I say, how

  come I’m not having a banquet like the rest of you guys, don’t

  I have as much right as anybody: the banqueters say,

  hunger will sharpen your perceptions and your perceptions

  120will be useful to us should we ever get hungry:

  oh, flubbery flubs, I say, neologizing: I don’t care a hang

  about your perceptions or mine either, I’m hungry: if

  I can’t have any of what you’re having, give me

  _________

  something else: you would be surprised at the fat indifference

  125of people at a time like that: call them a bunch of

  hogs and go off and eat the wind, what else: and suckle

  the rain and pretty soon you’re a nature poet, everybody

  saying, lands, something nice to go with dinner, they say he

  enjoys plants and feeds ants, a luminous starvation:

  130I have this theory about when people want you to assume

  the position of maximum receptivity or penitence they

  don’t tell you to sit down but to get down on your knees:

  that, in relation to the person who just told you to

  get down on your knees, leaves you looking into the

  135genital area, a dark, winding, if absorbing, subject:

  in that position you can receive the rod of knowledge

  head-on, or if you don’t receive it, you can get the

  image what you could receive if you don’t do right:

  almost anybody would rath
er do right, specially if the

  140commander is a beast: where this puts some men and women, who

  might get a small thrill from the warning and who might

  not decide to do right, I don’t quite know if I haven’t

  already said it: but it appears that the sexes are

  different, if equal: hustler or hooker, different

  145postures suggest different approaches: any way to make a

  buck, if you consider that one amoeba eats

  indigestible sand which it pushes out to the periphery

  of its protoplasm to form a casing, a little house

  not all flesh: a nature poet would be the first to

  150tell you that any way to get by is worth exploring:

  _________

  of course, I don’t mean to say anything mean about

  ants or other clever insects, builders, twirlers,

  weavers, stickers, and domicile developers: ever

  since, which was some time ago in reading Wheeler,

  155I heard about the ant that attaches itself to the

  chamber wall and allows itself to be fed till it’s a

  honey storage tank, well, I’ve been touched: it

  reminds me of myself in reverse: I’ve been storing

  up honey in civilization but though much emptied out,

  160I don’t get any emptier than I’ve always been: I was

  born on a farm and had to work and never got much

  book learning or much interest in it but I don’t mind it in

  others, really, provided it doesn’t swell to cause

  nonconversational flotation: I object to much bobbing

  165while I’m talking: I prefer people who simmer down

  and change the subject often, without flightiness: I

  don’t like people who flit from branch to branch of

  the learning tree so fast I can’t spot their majors

  from their minors: but then I don’t like people who

  170take off to say something and then just quit midway:

  it’s like leaving a bird permanently between bushes:

  I can tell you right now I don’t know how to write

  verse, not even poetry: if I did I wouldn’t be here,

  so to speak: I’d be off on a Greek island with Merrill

  175or in the radiantly inaccessible regions with Ashbery

  or vanishing into the clearest plenitudes with Merwin

  or reading from my works to the Poetry Society of

  _________

  America or South Orangeburg or I’d be mumbling among

  the members of the Academy of This or That instead of

  180just sweating it out as America’s Least Likely Issue:

  that is, don’t send me your poems, please, for comment

  and/or criticism: I don’t know what to say: not only

  don’t I know what you should write, or how, I don’t

  know what or how I should write: if I did I: I’ll

  185tell you what I do do, though: if I think of something

  I give it a whirl: if it comes off, well, it’s

  merciful: if it doesn’t, I still can’t throw it away,

  but I keep it around hoping it will flare out or up eventually:

  join or form and join a local group where you can share

  190your poems, see what others are doing: every now

  and then read a good poem, if you can find one you didn’t write

  yourself: I’m interested in you: but I can’t, since

  there’s one of me and fourteen billion of you, answer

  all the letters and provide hopeful hints: I say

  195there’s only one of me because though every letter

  begins “I know you must hear from a lot of people but”

  what every letter means is forget about those other

  people and give me your undaunted attention: this that

  I’m complaining about is not metaphysical: don’t look

  200to hear from me: I don’t have the secretary, the

  postage, or the know-how to come back at you: believe

  me: why is it that doctors expect to be paid for their

  time and lawyers and bowling coaches for their

  time but nobody expects to pay a poet: I guess poets

  _________

  205are supposed to be so used to poverty they don’t need

  any money: I suggest you send your poems to Galway

  Kinnell who knows a lot about the art of poetry or to

  Richard Howard who can afford the postage: don’t send

  to John Hollander who knows so much about the art of

  210poetry you wouldn’t understand a thing he said:

  what gets you around here are the raunchy, skinny

  bellies of coeds with the pear-like rump rondure

  sloping the dinky-little bicycle seats: wouldn’t

  it be fun to be leather: such starvation, what

  215gauntness of sinew and vein, what personal hairpullings

  and twistings with the sheets, what hold-overs and

  backorders, what lineations described with delight’s

  elaboration, what fingers in the mind twiddling, flicking,

  what sudden bombastic progressions and reversals, what

  220braidings and upbraidings of the rope of the self, what

  profiles, weights, curvings inward and outward, what a

  time I’m going to have with women’s movements, Adrienne

  is going to give me the sullen, if understanding and

  patient, eye and then burst into an oratorio of

  225verse-like abuse! Denise is off there by herself, now:

  she won, her victory our embarrassment: how I wish I

  would hear from her! what old-style men wanted of women

  was to get them down, fill them up, and go play golf,

  leaving the ladies to simmer in fruitfulness, wondering

  230what hit them, drenching and draining: new-style men

  have to remember that ladies like to play golf, too:

  _________

  a quaint plainness with full-scale cool reservation and

  qualification qualifying qualification, rhythm undecided,

  and explosive small gesturing: somewhere in there is

  235the truly heroic scale, the mind at a sufficient standstill,

  the underview amounting to a wide cancellation like

  space: oh, if only one could get to it, without

  meanwhile raising a bristle! how delightful to be so

  accomplished you’re completely unread! practically too

  240much to imagine with coolness: well, it’s the 4th or

  firth of forth and last night’s storm cleared the air

  which, however, filled the highways this morning, every

  other Philadelphian coming down to regard the waves

  and the other Philadelphians: what a herculean act of the

  245imagination to imagine Philadelphia imagining itself in America!

  you could draw a sharp line around Philadelphia, take it out,

  and no one, not even non-Philadelphian, would notice:

  I guess it’s because so much of our heritage is buried

  there: a prayer for flatness: what do

  250you do with flatness: you can’t pray for it, prayer

  too much into high rise: you could say, today I’m to be

  flattened out on the floor of the self’s sills:

  sublime (or counter sublime) as I am, I walk back from

  the beach by all the bathing beauties and bathing boys,

  255and by the older folks in good houses, and I feel like

  a bit of country trash, a splint of nothing washed up on

  the planks of time, and I feel impressed that all those

  people have made something important of themselves with

  _________

  less cloth, probably, than I hav
e: I hand it to them

  260(the importance, but I would also hand them the cloth)

  and think, how nice for you, you’ve found a suitable,

  dense smallness of the exact gravity and grist of your

  body, and there you are, unfloatingly answering the

  universe, that is, being integral with it and paying it

  265no mind: I found a dime on the way back: that’s the

  interest on two dollars for a whole year or maybe the

  interest on a million dollars for a second: the faucets

  here have water misty with microwaterbubbles, milky

  in look: I fill a glass and, though trash, go ga-ga,

  270marveling, something I do circumspectedly and limitedly

  these days: the bottom starts to clear as the bubbles

  rise and pretty soon you start to hear a fizz, specks

  of peppery water flying off the surface: and when the

  fizz is wildest, a motion counterclockwise commences,

  275as if the motion in the airiness could take hold or

  express itself better: then I observe that the bubbles

  don’t break in a continuous fizz but rapidly flash in

  patches big as your index fingerprint: when nearly all

  the bubbles are gone, the motion ends and fringe reefs,

  280as around atolls, stand like a long foam: I figure with

  precise instruments, I could discover a lot, quite