book data
12 ratings, 4.83 average rating, 3 reviews
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published
2006
by W. W. Norton
binding
Hardcover, 72 pages
isbn
0393064468
(isbn13: 9780393064469)
description
A reissue of the first published work of A. R. Ammons, "the Sublime of his generation" (Harold Bloom).
In A. R. Ammons's deb...more
In A. R. Ammons's deb...more
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other reviews (showing 1-17 of 17)
Read in February, 2008
Long unavailable, except as partially reprinted in his Collected Poems 1951-1971, Ammons's first book of poems (which he self-published) feels like the work of a fully mature artist. The poems don't wear their influence heavily, though it's clear he was an admirer of Emerson and Whitman, and in many ways may be a better example of an orracular voice than later poems, including Garbage. My favorite poem is still the very first:
So I said I am Ezra
and the wind whipped my throat
gaming for th...more
So I said I am Ezra
and the wind whipped my throat
gaming for th...more
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Read in October, 2008
recommends it for:
OMG YOU.
The more times I read this poem, the more troubled I am by it. It is beautiful and lovely and amazing, but it is scary, too. There is a tension of agency between man and God, and I keep reading it as an elegy of faith. It is emotionally dense, and I don't think I even agree with what is at stake here, but I love it anyway. It is troublesome to love a thing whose primary idea I find faulty. As Ezra writes in the sand with his own ribs, as he sharpens the cone of his God, and as he gathers st...more
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The republication (several years ago) of A.R. Ammons' first published poem, Ommateum, should excite long-time Ammons loyalists and new poets alike. Ommateum presents a dialogue between the poem's narrator, named Ezra, and the wind. Yes, the wind. While Ammons' poetic style here is very different from his later works, this poem--which Ammons self published in the early 1950s, to scant notice--really does mark the debut of a stunningly gifted poet. And, though his later work was more widely ac...more
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