A. R. Ammons
The Really Short Poems of A. R. Ammons
"Epigram, haiku, koan, imagist snapshot, proverb, aphorism, motto: Ammons's compressed, honed, precise lyrics now suggest one, now another of these genres. The mastery here is complete and all the more remarkable in light of Ammons's achievements in really long, sometimes book-length, poems.
Throughout his long and distinguished career, Ammons has shown repeatedly and successfully that his work aims to embody the complementary principles of expansion and contraction. This pithy, witty book testifies to the sublime possibilities of the latter."—Virginia Quarterly Review
"Filled with sharp irony and passionate insight, the more than 100 poems in the collection span the career of one of the deans of contemporary poetry. . . . Ammons makes you laugh and forces you to think hard about the way humans relate to natural phenomena and to themselves.
From such simple, short expression emerge complex, often confounding ideas. New readers of poetry as well as those with an active interest in lyric verse will love this volume."—Booklist
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