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The Really Short Poems
“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
- GenresPoetry
178 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
About the author
A.R. Ammons
60 books63 followersArchie 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
March 7, 2019
Many of these are solid work. Some of the light verse pieces might make you blench. He had a salty sense of humor. Sometimes he can fit that in and make it work. Sometimes it crashes the "poem" and it sounds like something to make codgers laugh at an American Legion bar. Whether he connects has nothing to do with his subject matter. He might write an interesting poem about a squirrel dippily hopping through his backyard, or one about the wind blowing through the tops of the trees, and then pen a totally boring poem about a truly interesting scientific concept that was just breaching in the world. The poems are just hit-and-miss like that throughout this collection.
Sometimes he seems too wordy (even in a collection of short poems) or the words seem too heavy for the poem but it still ends up interesting. Take...
RAINY MORNING
Sometimes the ridge across
the way transluminous
emerges above the mist
and squares and detached rondures
of vapory ground with
dairy barns and old trees
break out afloat
separated in high lyings
Sound. Excuses. So. Much.
You. Darn. Poem. Creatures.
Sound says to sound.
(This is a sound check.)
Sometimes he seems too wordy (even in a collection of short poems) or the words seem too heavy for the poem but it still ends up interesting. Take...
RAINY MORNING
Sometimes the ridge across
the way transluminous
emerges above the mist
and squares and detached rondures
of vapory ground with
dairy barns and old trees
break out afloat
separated in high lyings
Sound. Excuses. So. Much.
You. Darn. Poem. Creatures.
Sound says to sound.
(This is a sound check.)
June 18, 2022
I find a lot of these poems sort of twee and flimsy, but there's not a huge amount to be concretely said against them. Some of them push a really dense and layered syntax, particularly nested possessive constructions, which sounds interesting but can be a little too smart. Ammons is consistently a prickly enjamber, which I consider a positive: the poems aren't regularly rhymed or metred, but they regularly trip you up in parsing usually normal (sometimes nested) sentences that are quite aggressively enjambed across short lines. Short poems, short lines.
He has several poems named for abstract concepts which seem to have a certain German Idealist cache, like "Mediation," "Immediacy," and "Teleology." I thought "Teleology" was middling but "Mediation" actually quite memorable and effective:
The grove kept us dry,
subtracting from
the shower much
immediacy:
but then distracted us
for hours, dropping
snaps faint as the twigs
of someone coming. (92)
It's two quatrains and the division between them is a real volta, which is often missing from his poems, many of which seem kind of unthoughtful and insistent on describing only one thing in only one state, somewhat divorced from action or life. This is not so in this poem, which very much seems to be about mediation in a kind of broadly Hegelian sense. The grove mediates the rain shower, transforms its immediacy into something drawn-out, something different but the same. And then there is a metaphorical, signifying leap at the end, rather than a concrete mediation, in which the sound of the dripping wet grove recollects human approach. I like this idea a lot and this poem is a thinker – I'm also curious about the unremarked first person plural of the speaker, a unity of subjects nonetheless still perturbed by an approaching other – but I'm otherwise not blown away by what's happening formally. Ammons has a number of poems that are a single sentence with half a dozen colons in them, which is not something I've seen before as a style marker. "Mediation" almost fakes out its volta with a colon that tries to bridge the gap between stanzas, and the second stanza opens with 'but' which is like a third, slightly different marker of a twist that ends up potentially overdoing it. Like, we get it, it's a moment of transition. It would have maybe been more interesting just as a comma, because nobody can estimate the grammatical strength of a colon used like this (i.e. frequently, and followed by a conjunction).
I mostly don't like the titles but it's hard to fault someone for that when we're talking about 160 poems. I feel like Ammons' work here has the advantage of a certain narrow neatness which would be effectively imitated by students. I don't mean to imply that it is juvenile; rather, I think many of the poems offer up at least one fairly straightforward but often quite unusual and non-cliched idea or structure that can be reproduced in a different form. "Mediation" would be an example of that – write a poem about a single concrete mediation with one even volta in the middle. But I also like "Wiring," which is a single 11-line stanza, a single sentence, which starts and ends with the same word. The fact that the word is "radiance" maybe explains what I meant by calling the poems twee earlier, but nonetheless I think this poem is effective.
Radiance comes from
on high and, staying
sends down silk
lines to the flopping
marionette, me, but
love comes from
under the ruins and
sends the lumber up
limber into leaf that
touches so high it nearly
puts out the radiance. (41)
This poem is on thin ice for me because I find "flopping / marionette" and "lumber up / limber" and also the random invocation of love to all be quite annoying/cringe word combinations. But the actual image of the poem – what I take to be a twist on a pinocchio tale in which the wooden ("lumber") boy fills with life and grows and becomes-vegetal (a wooden boy who is not a real boy nor a real plant, until the sun makes him grow into leaf, which is again a strangely dialectical image from this American creative writer, a boy who is a negation of both humanity and living plant life until what life he has becomes instead a genuine plant life) and so on – very much sticks with me and thus the ending of the poem wraps up and redeems the weird, weird lexical execution. Write a poem about an amazing transformation in one sentence that starts and ends with the same word. Just don't make it cringe.
He has several poems named for abstract concepts which seem to have a certain German Idealist cache, like "Mediation," "Immediacy," and "Teleology." I thought "Teleology" was middling but "Mediation" actually quite memorable and effective:
The grove kept us dry,
subtracting from
the shower much
immediacy:
but then distracted us
for hours, dropping
snaps faint as the twigs
of someone coming. (92)
It's two quatrains and the division between them is a real volta, which is often missing from his poems, many of which seem kind of unthoughtful and insistent on describing only one thing in only one state, somewhat divorced from action or life. This is not so in this poem, which very much seems to be about mediation in a kind of broadly Hegelian sense. The grove mediates the rain shower, transforms its immediacy into something drawn-out, something different but the same. And then there is a metaphorical, signifying leap at the end, rather than a concrete mediation, in which the sound of the dripping wet grove recollects human approach. I like this idea a lot and this poem is a thinker – I'm also curious about the unremarked first person plural of the speaker, a unity of subjects nonetheless still perturbed by an approaching other – but I'm otherwise not blown away by what's happening formally. Ammons has a number of poems that are a single sentence with half a dozen colons in them, which is not something I've seen before as a style marker. "Mediation" almost fakes out its volta with a colon that tries to bridge the gap between stanzas, and the second stanza opens with 'but' which is like a third, slightly different marker of a twist that ends up potentially overdoing it. Like, we get it, it's a moment of transition. It would have maybe been more interesting just as a comma, because nobody can estimate the grammatical strength of a colon used like this (i.e. frequently, and followed by a conjunction).
I mostly don't like the titles but it's hard to fault someone for that when we're talking about 160 poems. I feel like Ammons' work here has the advantage of a certain narrow neatness which would be effectively imitated by students. I don't mean to imply that it is juvenile; rather, I think many of the poems offer up at least one fairly straightforward but often quite unusual and non-cliched idea or structure that can be reproduced in a different form. "Mediation" would be an example of that – write a poem about a single concrete mediation with one even volta in the middle. But I also like "Wiring," which is a single 11-line stanza, a single sentence, which starts and ends with the same word. The fact that the word is "radiance" maybe explains what I meant by calling the poems twee earlier, but nonetheless I think this poem is effective.
Radiance comes from
on high and, staying
sends down silk
lines to the flopping
marionette, me, but
love comes from
under the ruins and
sends the lumber up
limber into leaf that
touches so high it nearly
puts out the radiance. (41)
This poem is on thin ice for me because I find "flopping / marionette" and "lumber up / limber" and also the random invocation of love to all be quite annoying/cringe word combinations. But the actual image of the poem – what I take to be a twist on a pinocchio tale in which the wooden ("lumber") boy fills with life and grows and becomes-vegetal (a wooden boy who is not a real boy nor a real plant, until the sun makes him grow into leaf, which is again a strangely dialectical image from this American creative writer, a boy who is a negation of both humanity and living plant life until what life he has becomes instead a genuine plant life) and so on – very much sticks with me and thus the ending of the poem wraps up and redeems the weird, weird lexical execution. Write a poem about an amazing transformation in one sentence that starts and ends with the same word. Just don't make it cringe.
January 22, 2022
Now I'm
into things
so small
when I
say boo
I disappear
- Progress Report (pg. 105)
Ammons is at his best in the short, or should I say really short form. Before finding The Really Short Poems, I remember reading Ammons's Selected Poems and thinking, or suspecting, that I would probably prefer it if the selection consisted entirely of the poet's shorter poems. My suspicions have been confirmed.
It is my opinion that everything you need to read of Ammons's is collected here, with a few exceptions... Such as Tape for the Turn of the Year. Which is, at best, a novelty. The same is true of most of Ammons's longer poems (at least what I've read).
At their shortest, the poems range from 5 to 8 words...
Birds are flowers flying
and flowers perched birds.
- Mirrorment (pg. 8)
Wind rocks
the porch chairs
somebody home
- Calling (pg. 69)
Wearing away
wears
wearing
away away
- Pebble's Story (pg. 78)
It's hard
to live
living it
up down.
- The Upshot (pg. 133)
One failure on
Top of another
- Their Sex Life (pg. 136)
Bravery runs in my family.
- Coward (pg. 153)
At their longest, the poems aren't really really short but average length. Or, what could be considered a short poem for the average poet...
So the plastic conduits for the new
phone system could be put down,
the big-clawed, wheeling
forehoe dug a trench
into the original shale-lyings,
soil mixing trench-side with broken stone:
this morning, after last night's
downpour, the ground smells
sour, a scent no human form was here to
know when the shale went down.
- Cracking a Few Hundred Millions Years (pg. 46)
Of the images/subjects/themes that recur in Ammons's poetry, the two most conspicuous seem to be bees (as in "Hype", "Oblivion's Bloom" and "Transfer") and poetry itself (as in "Poetry to the Rescue" and "Theory Center")...
A pollen
fly makes
so much
of sounding
like a
bee because
he has
no sting.
- Hype (pg. 5)
Struck head to
ground in
first cold
the bumblebee
turns
in the sweetest
nectar yet
- Oblivion's Bloom (pg. 47)
When the bee lands the
morning glory bloom
dips some and weaves:
the coming true of
weight
from weightless wing-held
air
seems at the touch
implausible.
- Transfer (pg. 76)
You must be
nearly lost to
be (if
found) nearly
found
- Poetry to the Rescue (pg. 71)
Poetry if
not the
criticism of
life is
the life
of criticism
- Theory Center (pg. 103)
My favourite poems in the collection are those that resemble the Zen Kōan. Ammos borrows the symmetry and brevity of the Kōan, sometimes achieving a close approximation to the profundity of the Zen Kōan...
Continually is continually
from time to time
and continuously is
continually all the time.
- Over and Done With (pg. 9)
I found a
weed
that had a
mirror in it
and that
mirror
looked in at
a mirror
in
me that
had a
weed in it
- Reflective (pg. 16)
I never got on good
relations with the world
first I had nothing
the world wanted
then the world had
nothing I wanted
- Success Story (pg. 21)
It is one
thing
to know one
thing
and another
thing
to know another
thing.
- One Thing and Another (pg. 116)
One can't
have it
both ways
and both
ways is
the only
way I
want it.
- Coming Right Up (pg. 135)
Overall, The Really Short Poems are inclined toward a lightness that more often than not avoids the trivial. Ammons's approach is best described by two of his poems...
It doesn't
matter
to me
if
poems mean
nothing:
there's no
floor
to the
universe
and yet
one
walks the
floor.
- Substantial Planes (pg. 25)
I don't
want to
be taken
seriously except
that I
want my
wish not
to be
taken seriously
to be
taken seriously
- Quit That (pg. 127)
November 11, 2017
One of my favorite books of poetry.
These poems are completely in the mold of pithy. A lot of them are humorous, but there are also some beautiful observations..... a blue jay alighting and the tree breaking out in blue leaves.
If you have an interest in poetry but are unsure where to start, try this book. You'll read it quickly, with mostly a smile, and come away with a sense of satisfaction.
My recent read of this book was more of a "re-read" and I enjoyed it immensely.
These poems are completely in the mold of pithy. A lot of them are humorous, but there are also some beautiful observations..... a blue jay alighting and the tree breaking out in blue leaves.
If you have an interest in poetry but are unsure where to start, try this book. You'll read it quickly, with mostly a smile, and come away with a sense of satisfaction.
My recent read of this book was more of a "re-read" and I enjoyed it immensely.
August 16, 2023
I learn from the lake,
whole, composed,
whose shores thrash
wind-songs, that
I might trouble
you with an edge of
praise: I
stand by you
as complete as
you have made me
and praise will allow
~SECOND PARTY
The reeds give
way to the
wind and give
the wind away
~SMALL SONG
whole, composed,
whose shores thrash
wind-songs, that
I might trouble
you with an edge of
praise: I
stand by you
as complete as
you have made me
and praise will allow
~SECOND PARTY
The reeds give
way to the
wind and give
the wind away
~SMALL SONG
July 15, 2019
3.5 stars
December 20, 2021
A collection of short poems by my favorite poet.
-Gregory Kerkman
-Gregory Kerkman
May 21, 2022
Best short poems
June 10, 2022
Loved these tiny poems, especially the nature-based ones. Such a way with words.
January 24, 2024
Discovered a new old poet: A. R. Ammons, died 2001. This book of his short quirky and sometimes impenetrable poems is interspersed with truly dazzling wit and brilliant observations.
February 26, 2017
I liked some of it. Didn't like others.
March 7, 2013
3.5
I liked his stuff. It was good. It was a bit too.. nature-esk for me. Some of them were really intriguing and I read them a few times. None of them stuck out so much that I remember what they were called at the moment.
However, if you're ever out and about, it might be a fun thing to bring along for a read.
I liked his stuff. It was good. It was a bit too.. nature-esk for me. Some of them were really intriguing and I read them a few times. None of them stuck out so much that I remember what they were called at the moment.
However, if you're ever out and about, it might be a fun thing to bring along for a read.
April 20, 2015
Interesting poetry -- some of the poems are obtuse, others are humorous, poignant, observant, clever, aphoristic, or depressive. Few of the poems appear to be written quickly. The words are carefully sequenced to provide the intended response. Most show great feeling but a few seemed flippant. Some I like very much, others probably emotionally would move someone else or make them laugh.
July 16, 2010
Long a source for lessons in this or that without lots of verbiage, obviously, but repercussions as one can open to:
It's nice
after dinner
to walk down to
the beach
and find
the biggest
thing on earth
relatively calm.
(''Reading'')
It's nice
after dinner
to walk down to
the beach
and find
the biggest
thing on earth
relatively calm.
(''Reading'')
May 28, 2013
I enjoyed this book of poetry a lot! The poems really were "really short," but were often thought provoking. Also, since this has been a busy time for me, it's been relaxing and satisfying to read this book, a few poems at a time.
March 13, 2009
COMING TO
Like a steel drum
cast at sea
my days,
banged and dented
by a found shore of
ineradicable realities,
sandsunk, finally, gaping,
rustsunk in
compass grass
p. 33
Like a steel drum
cast at sea
my days,
banged and dented
by a found shore of
ineradicable realities,
sandsunk, finally, gaping,
rustsunk in
compass grass
p. 33
June 23, 2012
3.5 stars.
I was going to give it 3 stars, but in the last 50 pages or so, he started spouting all these clever and lovely poems that made me gasp with appreciation.
I was going to give it 3 stars, but in the last 50 pages or so, he started spouting all these clever and lovely poems that made me gasp with appreciation.
January 14, 2013
I carry this book with me almost wherever I go, in case I'm ever in need of some quick inspiration.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews