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Poets on Poetry
Set in Motion: Essays, Interviews, and Dialogues
Set in Motion collects for the first time the prose writings of A. R. Ammons, one of our most important and enduring contemporary poets. Hailed as a major force in American poetry by such redoubtable critics as Harold Bloom and Helen Vendler, Ammons has reflected upon the influences of luminaries like Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Frost, Stevens, and Williams while creating a compelling style and an artistic vision uniquely his own.
Set in Motion includes essays, reviews, and interviews as well as a selection of Ammons's poems, with commentary from the author about their inspiration and effects. He takes up the questions that have been central to American poetry over the last forty years and connects them to the larger enterprise of living in a difficult, changing world. At a moment when the arts are under attack, Ammons reminds us of the crucial role poetry plays in teaching us to recognize and use sources of understanding that are irreducible to statement.
A. R. Ammons is the author of Sphere, A Coast of Trees, and Garbage and was recently the editor of The Best American Poetry 1994. His awards include the MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, the Bollingen Prize, two National Book Awards, and prizes from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Book Critics Circle. He is Goldwin Smith Professor of Poetry, Cornell University.
Set in Motion includes essays, reviews, and interviews as well as a selection of Ammons's poems, with commentary from the author about their inspiration and effects. He takes up the questions that have been central to American poetry over the last forty years and connects them to the larger enterprise of living in a difficult, changing world. At a moment when the arts are under attack, Ammons reminds us of the crucial role poetry plays in teaching us to recognize and use sources of understanding that are irreducible to statement.
A. R. Ammons is the author of Sphere, A Coast of Trees, and Garbage and was recently the editor of The Best American Poetry 1994. His awards include the MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, the Bollingen Prize, two National Book Awards, and prizes from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Book Critics Circle. He is Goldwin Smith Professor of Poetry, Cornell University.
- GenresPoetry
136 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1997
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22 people want to read
About the author
A.R. Ammons
51 books64 followersArchie 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 6, 2019
This rather slim volume collects various writings by poet A.R. Ammons as well as some interviews. The contents represent Ammons’ career only up to the early 1990s, which is a pity, since the poet enjoyed nearly another ten years of productive output.
The material written by Ammons here is of two sorts. On one hand, there are essays about poetry in general, and these form Part I of this collection. Later, as Part III, we get brief commentaries that Ammons wrote on certain poems, and in the case of that the poems are short, the poems are reproduced here – otherwise, one will have to seek out e.g. the long poem Garbage to profit from Ammons’ remarks herein on those works.
Bookended by the writings by Ammons are the interviews. There are four of these, but they date from only the ten-year span 1984–1994, and so represent only one single, rather late phase of Ammons’ career. The interview conducted by Zofia Burr is interesting inasmuch as she tries to bring the conversation around to issues of gender, power and privilege that were then beginning to assert themselves in academic discourse, but Ammons isn’t biting. There is an amusing passage where Ammons recounts a brief stay in Italy and how he hated it, and wasn’t interested “in all that cultural crap”. It certainly sets Ammons out as a distinctly American poet even among American poets.
Ultimately Set in Motion was entertaining enough for this fan of Ammons, but I did not feel that it shed much new light on his poems – to a large degree, Ammons’ poetics are made explicit by the poems themselves and the poet himself can offer little new explication in his prose work. As far as Ammons commentary goes, the notes in the recent Collected Poems are more helpful, and I imagine that the forthcoming biography of Ammons by Roger Gilbert will give more background on Ammons’ life than the biographical information provided herein.
The material written by Ammons here is of two sorts. On one hand, there are essays about poetry in general, and these form Part I of this collection. Later, as Part III, we get brief commentaries that Ammons wrote on certain poems, and in the case of that the poems are short, the poems are reproduced here – otherwise, one will have to seek out e.g. the long poem Garbage to profit from Ammons’ remarks herein on those works.
Bookended by the writings by Ammons are the interviews. There are four of these, but they date from only the ten-year span 1984–1994, and so represent only one single, rather late phase of Ammons’ career. The interview conducted by Zofia Burr is interesting inasmuch as she tries to bring the conversation around to issues of gender, power and privilege that were then beginning to assert themselves in academic discourse, but Ammons isn’t biting. There is an amusing passage where Ammons recounts a brief stay in Italy and how he hated it, and wasn’t interested “in all that cultural crap”. It certainly sets Ammons out as a distinctly American poet even among American poets.
Ultimately Set in Motion was entertaining enough for this fan of Ammons, but I did not feel that it shed much new light on his poems – to a large degree, Ammons’ poetics are made explicit by the poems themselves and the poet himself can offer little new explication in his prose work. As far as Ammons commentary goes, the notes in the recent Collected Poems are more helpful, and I imagine that the forthcoming biography of Ammons by Roger Gilbert will give more background on Ammons’ life than the biographical information provided herein.
October 15, 2007
wonderful insight on how to read as well as one man's approach to writing poetry.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews