Someone I showed this poem to gave back to me after reading it back the book after a cursory glance up and down the page. She asked: "where's the beef?". Then we had a beef; I liked the poem, she didn't, and we took several hours to smooth out the differences between us. Assuredly, more than a difference of view on what constitutes quality in free verse poems was under review , and yes, I realize that recollection resembles a scenario for a minor key spasm of-of "flash fiction" that would be doomed to see print in a small magazine that would reach the hands of on the chronically poetic.The "beef", is Ammons' details, and the poem works precisely because of his plain speech and the emphasis on his line breaks. Ammons' narrator highlights a more fleshed out version of the same sort of subject, making the point that what comes at you fast in life are marriages, births, and deaths, in that order, in thick, hard clusters; before you know it, you're at the end of it all while the cycle continues for another generation. One descends either into cynicism and despair, or one considers themselves to have been fortunate, blessed, to have lived a life that's endured joy, failure, and every celebration and tragedy in between. Yes, this is a poem, there is no pretense about it, and it works very powerfully because of Ammons' couplet form; the prose reformatting turns this into something anyone converted to paragraph form would be, a series of run-on sentences.I like his language, his ability to keep a topic running through a myriad of associations that wouldn't ordinarily meet in a piece of writing, and I admire his utter lack of pretentiousness. This is quite wonderful.
In View of the FactBy A. R. AmmonsThe people of my time are passing away: mywife is baking for a funeral, a 60-year-old whodied suddenly, when the phone rings, and it'sRuth we care so much about in intensive care:it was once weddings that came so thick andfast, and then, first babies, such a hullabaloo:now, it's this that and the other and somebodyelse gone or on the brink: well, we neverthought we would live forever (although we did)and now it looks like we won't: some of usare losing a leg to diabetes, some don't knowwhat they went downstairs for, some know thata hired watchful person is around, some liketo touch the cane tip into something steady,so nice: we have already lost so many,brushed the loss of ourselves ourselves: ouraddress books for so long a slow scramble noware palimpsests, scribbles and scratches: ourindex cards for Christmases, birthdays,Halloweens drop clean away into sympathies:at the same time we are getting used to somany leaving, we are hanging on with a gripto the ones left: we are not giving up on thecongestive heart failure or brain tumors, onthe nice old men left in empty houses or onthe widows who decide to travel a lot: wethink the sun may shine someday when we'lldrink wine together and think of what used tobe: until we die we will remember everysingle thing, recall every word, love everyloss: then we will, as we must, leave it toothers to love, love that can grow brighterand deeper till the very end, gaining strengthand getting more precious all the way. . . .
In other news, I've ranted on occasion that there should be no more poems about poetry, I thought why I liked "Called into Play" and not the work of other writers. Attitude is the difference, I guess. My basic gripe is against who regard poetry as a vehicle of relentless self-revelation, the sub-Nerudians and faux Rilkeans who seemed to have skipped the other qualities their inspiring source's poetry had and instead are determined to make a cult from the practice; the poet as priest is not an image that appeals to me and even the most supreme of egoist geniuses, Walt Whitman, would likely find the conceit a bit vain. But there's always exceptions to anyone's "rules" about the proper tone and stance a poet needs to maintain when bringting their stanzas into the world, and Ammons is an exception indeed, a brilliant one , and he's exception who doesn't sound like he intends his poems to please anyone's gilded sense of the proper. He will talk about what he wants to, what he needs to, in whatever manner he deems fit. Good for him.
Called into Play
A.R. AmmonsFall fell: so that's it for the leaf poetry:some flurries have whitened the edges of roadsand lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: &turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going tofind something to write about I haven't alreadywritten away: I will have to stop short, lookdown, look up, look close, think, think, think:but in what range should I think: should Ifigure colors and outlines, given forms, saymailboxes, or should I try to plumb what isbehind what and what behind that, deep downwhere the surface has lost its semblance: orshould I think personally, such as, this weekseems to have been crafted in hell: what: issomething going on: something besides thisdiddledeediddle everyday matter-of-fact: Icould draw up an ancient memory which wouldwipe this whole presence away: or I could fillout my dreams with high syntheses turned intoconcrete visionary forms: Lucre could lustfor Luster: bad angels could roar out of perditionand kill the AIDS vaccine not quiteperfected yet: the gods could get down oneach other; the big gods could fly in fromnebulae unknown: but I'm only me: I have 4interests--money, poetry, sex, death: I guessI can jostle those. . . .
...should I try to plumb what isbehind what and what behind that, deep downwhere the surface has lost its semblance: orshould I think personally, such as, this weekseems to have been crafted in hell: what: issomething going on: something besides thisdiddledeediddle everyday matter-of-fact: Icould draw up an ancient memory which wouldwipe this whole presence away...