Diversifications

by A.R. Ammons

Diversifications is a collection of shorter poems by the poet whose Collected Poems won the National Book Award. The poems are on a diversity of subjects, but through them all runs the strong unity of vision that has led critic Geoffrey Hartman to acclaim Ammons as "a major American poet" ( New York Times Book Review ). "If his importance was suspected before," wrote the poet John Ashbery in The New York Review of Books , "it is now confirmed." Ammons came late to poetry, and has come even more lately into national recognition. That recognition is solid, however, and can only be increased by this, his latest volume.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published October 17, 1975

About the author

Archie Randolph Ammons was born outside Whiteville, North Carolina, on February 18, 1926. He started writing poetry aboard a U. S. Navy destroyer escort in the South Pacific. After completing service in World War II, he attended Wake Forest University and the University of California at Berkeley.

His honors included the Academy's Wallace Stevens Award, the Poetry Society of America's Robert Frost Medal, the Ruth Lilly Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He lived in Ithaca, New York, where he was Goldwin Smith Professor of Poetry at Cornell University until his retirement in 1998. Ammons died on February 25, 2001.