Brink Road

by A.R. Ammons

"No contemporary poet, in America, is likelier to become a classic than A. R. Ammons."―Harold Bloom With characteristic economy, A. R. Ammons writes that "Brink Road lies off NY 96 between Candor and Catatonk." The very name suggests that we are ever in transition from one state of mind to another always on the edge of revelation.

The more than 150 poems in Brink Road date from 1973 to the present, dealing with Ammons's concerns with language, mortality, and the forces underlying the natural world. With elegance, wit, and ruminative gravity, Brink Road is an important addition to one of the most enduring bodies of poetry of our time.

Genres: Poetry

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

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

[Mads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Time and again I read one of the poems here, "The Clenched-Jaw School" and by poem's end I realize that my jaw is clenched, my shoulders are tense and I need to breathe deeply and calm down. I suspect the older I get, the more I'll get to appreciate Ammons and seek him out for comfort.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a good deal of Ammons, probably most of what's in print, yet this is my favorite. I'm not sure why. The long poem [Summer Place] is nice, but it's the other chunk of the book that has the short ones that gets to me. Just something about them I never tire of.

[Tom Falcone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was going to to give this collection 4 stars, but then I read summer place, which is my all time favorite poem and exactly the kind of thing I wish I had written. So, that poem earned the entire collection an extra star.

[M · Rating 5 out of 5]

without knowing why, i stole this book from my high school library. it is an old friend.