Selected Longer Poems

by A.R. Ammons

Readers already familiar with Ammons’s longer mode in other books will welcome this new collection, while those familiar only with the shorter poems will find their appreciation of his work both deepened and heightened. The Selected Poems: 1951-1977 was described by one critic as “an indispensable book”; Selected Longer Poems is an indispensable companion to it. The distinguished poet A. R. Ammons once described himself as, “not so much looking for the shape as being available to any shape that may be summoning itself through me from the self not mine but ours.” This “availability” has enabled his poetic genius to be at home in forms raging from brief lyrics―the best of which he brought together in The Selected Poems: 1951-1977 ―all the way to poems of full book length.

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

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.

Reviews

[Cameron Cook]

Continues to be the poet I return to in times of anxiety, desperation, struggle. Ammons speaks a language I can’t hear enough. Truly one of the most engaging and inspiring artists of my life.

[Gareth Reeves · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a collection of fine poems, rather than a fine collection of poems, and one that has long been eclipsed by the Collected Poems, 1951-1971, which contains all but the first poem, 'Pray without Ceasing' (also the weakest). Buy the Collected Poems; if you already own it, get A Coast of Trees, Sphere, Garbage, etc., but don't waste your hard-earned on this.