I love it when a random grab from a library shelf unleashes something this good into my world. The whole time I was reading this, (in between- of course- gasps of recognition) I was thinking what a grand thing it would be; to spend an evening chatting with Ammons over cocktails, to hash out a momentary description of cognition, a slew of words coming to ephemeral omniscience. The man has skill, we’ll start at that.
Having recently become interested in epic poetry, (see A Flirtation With Genesis) I thought I’d take a peek at what was out there in contemporary literature. It should come as no surprise to those of you who frequent these pages that I was immediately drawn to the volume titled Garbage, and indeed, the idea of imagery of refuse constantly crops up in this brilliant piece.
Title: Garbage: A Poem
Author: A. R. Ammons
LC Rating:
Prior to preceding, I think it’s relevant that I state my general displeasure with modern poetry; it’s far too image focused, the weight of reality never seems to stain the little blurbs of sentence fragmentation that have become the fascination of people over invested in their own importance. Garbage sidesteps all of that with an elegance that frankly took my breath away.
Garbage endeared itself to me immediately, on the very first page he questions the essential worth of poetry itself, and pokes a few tongue-in-cheek jabs at himself in the process. Ammons manages to do what epic poetry is supposed to do, he sweeps far and wide across the field of human possibility, but never looses sight of the essential theme. What essential theme? The essential theme! The meaning of life itself, and the beauty of our inability to express it are approached from myriad angles
“he stands in the presence of the momentarily everlasting”
There are some lines in here that just sing. I found myself reading the thing out-loud, stopping occasionally when the imagery and philosophy hit those potent notes that are the reason I bother to read anything at all. In Garbage, Ammons hits a score of them.
“everything is theater and eternity is nothing at all”
“I have seen the future; it just went by”
This is landfill lyricism at it’s finest; the tone is confessional, searching, admitting frailty and failure as it attempts profundity.
“why must we answer up to reality, when we can axle reality into our illusions”
“precarious abstraction will have to be the world’s feed for a long time”
Ammons finds profundity in a bird pooping on his shoulder, in a man on a bulldozer pushing about the piles of refuse that our society is continuously creating.
“since words were introduced here things have gone poorly for the planet”
Reading Garbage was an exercise in reaffirmation. It is always a grand thing to have someone else stating so eloquently the sorts of ideas that are haunting you, a reminder of the ties that bind all humanity, especially the cognoscenti.
“poetry is not logic or knowledge or philosophy; it is action and action’s pleasure”
“is truth in the fact or in the persuasion”
Garbage contains essential questions, elegant imagery and was, (for me) another sign that perhaps there is still hope. Hope, that fragile construct we weave to soar above all this refuse. Thank you Ammons, for Garbage.
January 30th, 2006 at 7:04 pm
On a somber note, I just ran A. R. Ammons through wikipedia to see titles of his other books for library investigations, and it turns out I won’t be able to sit down over cocktails with the man. He died in 2001, but apparantly left a rather large body of work behind him and I am grateful for that.