Ammons, A R

▪ 2002

      American poet and scholar (b. Feb. 18, 1926, near Whiteville, N.C.—d. Feb. 25, 2001, Ithaca, N.Y.), won almost every major American poetry award during a career that spanned nearly half a century. Regarded as a 20th-century Transcendentalist poet, Ammons explored the relationship between man, nature, and the self through free verse. In his work, which also often dealt with the quotidian, he skillfully maintained a philosophical yet conversational tone. Ammons, who grew up on a farm during the Depression, joined the U.S. Naval Reserve at the age of 18, at the height of World War II. It was during his service aboard a navy destroyer in the Pacific that he began writing poetry. After the war Ammons earned a degree in biology (1949) from Wake Forest College (now Wake Forest University), Winston-Salem, N.C., and attended graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. He worked as an elementary school principal, a real-estate agent, and a sales executive at a New Jersey glass company before publishing his first volume of poetry, Ommateum: With Doxology (1955). It was followed by Expressions of Sea Level (1963) and Tape for the Turn of the Year (1965; written on adding-machine tape), which was published the year after he became a teacher of creative writing at Cornell University, Ithaca, where he spent the rest of his career. Ammons published nearly 30 books, including Uplands (1970), A Coast of Trees (1981; winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award), and National Book Award winner Garbage (1993), a book-length poem about a huge pile of decomposing trash he spotted near Interstate 95 in Florida. Glare, his last volume, appeared in 1997.

* * *