by A. R. Ammons
When the bubbles of nothingness rise
out of nothing—
a fine and brittle crust like
blown glass, cooled motion, forms
and in the rough spots
chinks of someday
we have our lives
build wars, consider
prophets, and
carefully seek to know
what robe or crown to wear
One copy of the computer-printed TS (probably produced by an assistant) on which the published version above was based includes two corrections in the poet’s handwriting: “congealing” replaces “someday” (the assistant appears to have misread Ammons’s holograph, in which “congealing” does resemble “someday”), and “tam” replaces “robe.”
The TS of “Quanta” suggests that he considered making two changes: he handwrote “get about” after line 7, possibly as a substitute for “have” in line 7 or for “build” in line 8, and at the poem’s end he handwrote “gets gone” above “blows away,” as if weighing one conclusion against another.
§
SEQUENCES OF THE SELECTED POEMS
Ammons assembled and saw into publication three Selected Poems and a Selected Longer Poems; none of those selections included previously uncollected work. In each he ordered the poems by chronology of composition, though uncertainty with regard to specific dates for the early poems allowed him some flexibility in the sequencing.
Selected Poems was published in 1968 by Cornell University Press, bearing the dedication “for my wife Phyllis and son John.” The ninety-nine poems were sequenced as follows:
So I Said I Am Ezra • The Sap Is Gone Out of the Trees • I Went Out to the Sun • The Whaleboat Struck • Turning a Moment to Say So Long • Dying in a Mirthful Place • With Ropes of Hemp • Doxology • Having Been Interstellar • Coming to Sumer • I Struck a Diminished Seventh • When I Set Fire to the Reed Patch • A Treeful of Cleavage Flared Branching • I Set It My Task [a revision, later reversed, of “In the Wind My Rescue Is”] • A Crippled Angel • I Came upon a Plateau • Whose Timeless Reach • Driving Through • Song • Hymn • Hymn II • Hymn III • The Watch • March Song • Ritual for Eating the World • The Wide Land • Batsto • Mountain Liar • Gravelly Run • Prospecting • Joshua Tree • Thaw • The Wind Coming Down From • Silver • Hardweed Path Going • Close-up • Bourn • Composing • Orientale • Mansion • Prodigal • Mechanism • Guide • The Golden Mean • Risks and Possibilities • Terrain • Bridge • Coon Song • Unsaid • Raft • River • Lines • The Strait • Identity • What This Mode of Motion Said • Nucleus • Jungle Knot • The Misfit • Nelly Myers • Motion for Motion • Visit • Expressions of Sea Level • Still • The Yucca Moth • The Constant • Motion • Corsons Inlet • Saliences • Dunes • Moment • Glass • Configurations • Reflective • Butterflyweed • Contingency • Trap • Halfway • Landscape with Figures • Dark Song • World • Portrait • Winter Scene • Loss • Recovery • Interference • Peak • Passage • Kind • Height
The Selected Poems 1951–1977 was published in 1977 by W. W. Norton, with a dedication “to Frederick Morgan.” The eighty-one poems were sequenced thus:
So I Said I Am Ezra • Bees Stopped • The Pieces of My Voice • Coming to Sumer • In the Wind My Rescue Is • I Came Upon a Plateau • Choice • Hymn • The Wide Land • Gravelly Run • Prospecting • The Wind Coming Down From • Terminus • Possibility Along a Line of Difference • Mansion • Prodigal • Mechanism • Guide • Terrain • Identity • Jungle Knot • The Misfit • Visit • Expressions of Sea Level • One:Many • Still • Corsons Inlet • Saliences • Dunes • Center • Reflective • Winter Scene • Mountain Talk • Loss • Recovery • Laser • Height • He Held Radical Light • Poetics • Cascadilla Falls • Love Song • Love Song (2) • Involved • Project • Offset • The Quince Bush • Small Song • Script • Square • Correction • Help • Photosynthesis • The Account • Holly • The Confirmers • Snow Log • Classic • Clarity • Periphery • Upland • Cut the Grass • Further On • If Anything Will Level with You Water Will • Conserving the Magnitude of Uselessness • Plunder • Triphammer Bridge • The City Limits • Right On • Rectitude • Sorting • Viable • Delaware Water Gap • Day • Staking Claim • The Eternal City • Phase • Eyesight • The Arc Inside and Out • Uppermost • Bonus • For Harold Bloom
Selected Longer Poems was published in 1980 by W. W. Norton, dedicated “with all my love to my son John.” The five poems included were the long poems Ammons wrote after Tape for the Turn of the Year and before Sphere: The Form of a Motion, and they appeared in this order:
Pray Without Ceasing • Summer Session • Essay on Poetics • Extremes and Moderations • Hibernaculum
The Selected Poems: Expanded Edition was published in 1986 by W. W. Norton, dedicated “to Frederick Morgan.” The contents and sequence were the same as in The Selected Poems 1951–1977, but with these seven poems added, in this order, after “For Harold Bloom”:
Easter Morning • Night Finding • Parting • Givings • Rivulose • Singling & Doubling Together • Giving up Words with Words
§
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The previously uncollected poems in Appendix A and Appendix B, or earlier versions of those poems, first appeared in the following publications:
Ackee: “Cornell’s Wee Stinkie.”
The American Poetry Review: “Core Sample,” “Don’t Rush on My Account,” “Frumpy Cronies,” “Quanta” (without its title), “Run Ragged,” “Shuffled Marbles.”
Banyan: “Winter Crop.”
Beloit Poetry Journal: “David,” “Sung Reassertions.”
Boundary 2: “Untelling.”
Café Solo: “Transcending.”
Chattahoochee Review: “Castaways.”
Chelsea: “For Emily Wilson from a Newcomer.”
Chicago Review: “The Grave Is.”
Choice: “Canto 46,” “Diner.”
City: “One Extreme to the Other.”
Cornell Alumni News: “Harry Caplan.”
The Cornell Crescent: “A Priori,” “Reticulum of Indirection.”
Diacritics: “Address.”
Epoch: “Contested Ground,” “The Gathering,” “Good as Done” (as “As Good as Done”), “Late Scene,” “MotionShape,” “Other News,” “Rap Sheet,” “Red Edges,” “Religious Feeling,” “Right Call,” “Shuffled Marbles” (as “Rolled Marbles”), “The Skimpy Side of Nothing,” “Spot Check” (“We old people sit . . .”), “Woman.”
Epos: “Community,” “Interim,” “It Is As Far,” “View.”
The Georgia Review: “Away.”
Grand Street: “Mucilage,” “Spot Check” (“The least boring way . . .”).
The Grapevine: “A Bit of the Bubbly for Ep Fogel.”
Harper’s: “Arete,” “Attending,” “Mid-Morning.”
Harvard Review: “Candle Lit,” “Following Tragedy,” “Opinion’s Pinions.”
The Hudson Review: “11-25-56,” “Forerunners,” “Inclinations,” “Motion Which Disestablishes Organizes Everything,” “The Sale Sale,” “Slights of Sight,” “Turning Things Out Good,” “Why Is It Always the Way It Always Is.”
Impetus: “Canto 24.”
Metre: “A Regular Mess,” “Spills.”
The Nation: “Dinah.”
The New Republic: “Rosalie.”
The New York Times Book Review: “For Andrew Wyeth.”
The New Yorker: “Birthday Poem to My Wife,” “Embedded Storms,” “Shot Glass,” “Speaking.”
The News and Observer (Raleigh, NC): “Pileup.”
Niobe: “A Birth of Winter.”
North Carolina Literary Review: “Alligator Holes Down Along About Old Dock,” “Keeping Track.”
The Ohio Review: “Time after Time.”
Panoply: “Generally Clear with Scattered Slippery Spots,” “Saving Account.”
Partisan Review: “Hymn” (“Make lean . . .”), “Readings by Ways,” “Time Being.”
Pembroke Magazine: “Breaking for the Broken,” “Could Be,” “Marking Time,” “Noted Imposition,” “Summer Fashion.”
Poetry: “Clabberbabble,” “Connection,” “Emerging Curves,” “For Edwin Wilson,” “For Emily Wilson,” “An Improvisation for Angular Momentum,” “An Improvisation for the Pieties of Modernism,” “Sumerian Vistas,” “The Surprise of an Ending.”
Prairie Schooner: “Commissary.”
Praxis: “An Improvisation for Fran Bullis.”
Princeton Library Chronicle: “Ping Jockeys.”
The Quest: “Chinaberry.”
Raven: “Between.”
Rune: “Necessity,” “Scientific Breakdown.”
The Sewanee Review: “Convergences Downward,” “Self.”
A Shout in the Street: “An Improvisation for Goldwin Smith.”
The Southern Review: “Religious Matters.”
Stony Brook: “All Set,” “Confessional Poem.”
Tar River Poetry: “Making Fields,” “Maple.”
Trojan Horse: “Urban Rage.”
Truck: “Spring Lines.”
Typographica: “Countercurrency.”
Ubu: “Thoroughfaring” (as “Thoroughfares”).
University of Toronto Quarterly: “Oops.”
Vanderbilt Poetry Review: “For Robert Penn Warren.”
Verse: “Plain Divisions,” “Taking Place.”
The Yale Review: “Man’s Nature,” “Spiritual Progress.”
§
The Gritloaf Anthology, edited by Pete Bonnette and Isabel Zuber (Palaemon Press, 1978): “Delineation.”
I Have Walked: Stories and Poems about Poverty, edited by Ruth Moose (North Carolina Poverty Project, 1989): “Settlements.”
Literary Vision, edited by Jack Tilton (Jack Tilton Gallery, 1988): “Work Notes.”
No Business Poems, edited by Sherry Beasley (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Printing, 1980): “Quick Song.”
Poems for a Small Planet, edited by Robert Pack and Jay Parini (Middlebury College Press, University of New England Press, 1993): “Somers Point,” “White Echo.”
Southern Poetry Today: Impetus Chapbook No. 2, edited by Guy Owen and William E. Taylor (Owen and Taylor, 1962): “Slippery Log Swamp.”
Washington and the Poet, edited by Francis Coleman Rosenberger (University Press of Virginia, 1977): “Marble.”
§
“Fire Going” first appeared as a jacket comment on Douglas Worth’s Invisibilities (poems), published by Apple-wood Press in 1977.
“Mule” (as “The Mule”) and “High Heaven” first appeared in The Mule Poems, a chapbook of mule-related poems by A. R. Ammons, edited by Alex Albright and published by R. A. Fountain in 2010.
“Motion Which Disestablishes Organizes Everything” was reprinted in The Best American Poetry 1988, edited by John Ashbery and David Lehman. “Now Then” was reprinted in The Best American Poetry 1998, edited by John Hollander and David Lehman. “Shot Glass” was reprinted in The Best American Poetry 2000, edited by Rita Dove and David Lehman.
INDEX OF TITLES
“Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.”
“Abandon,” 350
“Above the Fray Is Only Thin Air,” 738
“Abscission,” 347
“Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder,” 169
“Address,” 785
“Ah,” 204
“Alligator Holes Down Along About Old Dock,” 862
“All’s All,” 394
“All Set,” 782
“America,” 688
“Anger Tangle,” 338
“Antithesis,” 20
“Anxiety’s Prosody,” 324
“Apologetics,” 75
“Appendix,” 404
“A Priori,” 823
“Aquarium Watch,” 176
“Arete,” 795
“Around Here,” 210
“Attending,” 793
“Aubade,” 685
“Auditions,” 732
“Augmentations in Early March,” 52
“Autonomy,” 155
“Away,” 796
“Back-Burnerd,” 714
“Backcasting,” 156
“Bad Goods,” 678
“Balsam Firs,” 723
“Beautiful Woman,” 403
“Becoming Become Of,” 166
“Between,” 787
“Between Each Song,” 734
“Birthday Poem to My Wife,” 874
“Birth of Winter, A,” 780
“Bit of the Bubbly for Ep Fogel, A,” 796
“Blues in the Valley,” 357
“Body Marks,” 727
“Bong,” 677
“Bookish Bookseller,” xxxii
“Boon,” 373
Bosh and Flapdoodle, xxxi, xxxviii, xlii, xliii, l, li, lii, liii, 680
“Bottommost,” 202
“Breaking for the Broken,” 819
“Breaking Out,” 21
“Bride,” 50
“Bright Side, The,” 59
Brink Road, xxxii, 307
“Broad Brush,” 314
“Bulletin,” 215
“Burnout in the Overshoot,” 180
“Buttermilk Falls,” 95
“By the Boulder Cluster the Wind,” 73
“Called into Play,” 713
“Calling” (“My endorsing song blocks out”), 40
“Calling” (“Wind rocks”), 203
“Candle Lit,” 867
“Canto 24,” 775
“Canto 46,” 773
“Capabilities,” 326
“Capture,” 219
“Castaways,” 848
“Category of Last Resort, The,” 343
“Celestial Dealings,” 198
“Ceppagna,” 345
“Changing Stations,” 351
“Checking Out the Resources,” 157
“Chinaberry,” 784
“Chiseled Clouds,” 149
“Chosen Roads,” 423
“Circling Splinters,” 208
“Citified,” 188
“Clabberbabble,” 874
“Clarifications,” 197
“Clenched-Jaw School, The,” 345
“Close Relations,” 211
Coast of Trees, A, 4
“Coast of Trees,” 4
“Coffee Shoppe,” 675
“Cognoscenti,” 403
“Cold Rheum,” 217
“Cold Spell,” 53
“Collapsed Structures,” 352
Collected Poems 1951–1971, xxxii, xlii
“Coming Right Up,” 215
“Coming Round” (1972), 91
“Coming Round” (1984), 182
“Commissary,” 845
“Community,” 779
“Confessional Poem,” 782
“Connecting Misses,” 360
“Connection,” 778
“Conservationist,” 331
“Construing Deconstruction,” 321
“Contested Ground,” 921
“Continuing,” 5
“Continuity,” 403
“Convergences Downward,” 791
“Cool Intimacies,” 310
“Core Sample,” 894
“Cornell’s Wee Stinkie,” 866
“Could Be,” 821
“Countercurrency,” 851
“Country Music,” 25
“Course Work,” 212
“Cousins,” 190
“Cracking a Few Hundred Million Years,” 196
“Crinkling Trails,” 196
“Crow Ride,” 203
“Crystal Tree, The,” 365
“Damned, The,” 389
“David,” 795
> “Day Ghosts,” xxxii, 398
“Deaf Zone,” 194
“Death and Silhouettes,” 417
“Debris,” 90
“December Starlings,” 333
“Deep End, The,” 354
“Deep Slow, The,” 339
“Delineation,” 811
“Density,” 12
“Depressed Areas,” 730
“Design,” 52
“Devastation,” 56
“Digging Wonder,” 191
“Dinah,” 784
“Diner,” 785
“Disclaimer,” 385
“Dishes and Dashes,” 731
“Dismantlings,” 92
“Distraction,” 17
“Dominant Margins,” 160
“Dominion,” 157
“Don’t Rush on My Account,” 940
“Downing Lines,” 319
“Down Low,” 92
“Downstream,” 374
“Dry Spell Spiel,” 22
“Dumb Clucks,” 721
“Dusk Water,” 85
“Dwelling, The,” 167
“Earliest Recollection,” 177
“Early Indications,” 148
“Early Stones,” 359
“Easter Morning,” 14
“Eclipse Goes By Drawing, The,” 84
“Eidos,” 173
“11-25-56,” 770
“Elite Street,” 322
“Embedded Storms,” 876
“Emerging Curves,” 867
“Enameling,” 308
“Enfield Falls,” 414
“Entranceways,” 159
“Epistemology,” 42
“Equilibrations,” 190
“Erminois,” 320
“Establishment,” 313
“Eternity’s Taciturnity,” 372
“Evasive Actions,” 360
“Eventually Is Soon Enough,” 11
“Exchangers,” 82
Expressions of Sea Level, xxxii, xli, xliv
“Expropriations,” 412
“Extravaganza,” 35
“Extrication,” 38
“Fairly High Assimilation Rag, The,” 64
“Fall’s End,” 418
“Fascicle,” 311
“Fasting,” 680
“Feel Like Traveling On,” 29
“Feint Praise,” 717
“Few Acres of Shiny Water, A,” 715
“Figuring Belief,” 195
“Filling in the Dots,” 195
“Financial Services,” 407
