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PARTISAN REVIEW
mode, often involving discourse with trees, birds, sun and moon , not
excluding dryads and angels. From the start, Ammons had more
knowledge about natural phenomena than any poet in sight, but the
knowledge was absorbed by the psychodrama. Alexander Pope would
have call ed this kind of treatment of nature "fancy's maze." Like many
other pas toral poets, Ammons has stooped or ri sen to truth and
philosophized his song, seeking ra ti onal grounds for hi s initial sense of
na tural magic. T he massive
Co llected Poem s,
whi ch deservedl y won a
Na tional Book Award in 1973, foll ows a trajectory from the gifted
insight toward medita ti on upon the insight.
Ammons's
Sphere
is cl early a maj or underta king: a long, scrupu–
lously though unsys tema ti call y phil osophical poem, in a tradi ti on
which springs from Wordsworth and Whitman , through Stevens's
No tes T oward a Supreme Fiction,
in whi ch the protagonist is the
poe t's mind, and the tas k in hand is to define, through unguided
medita tion , the connecti on between macrocosm and mi crocosm in a
seemingly secul ar universe.
Sphere
ponders, among other ma tters, the
human cycle of life and dea th, where it fits into na ture's, where earth
fits into the solar system, it into the galaxy, galaxy in to uni verse; what
in the nature of things is the imaginati on , where does it come from,
what can we hope of it; wha t is poetry, what are the gods, chaos,
crea tion; how may we find, beyond survival, salva ti on , and beyond
indi vidual consciousness, "joy's surviving radiance." Ammons comes
on h ardheaded, therefore more credibl e than mos t, a bout matters of the
spiri t. In the poem 's overture, he describes the embodyings and
disembodyings of the mind, phil osophy's process, as di ges ti on :
2
Often those who are not good for much else turn to tho ught
and it 's just great, part of the grand possibility, that
thought is there to turn
to :
camoufl agy thought flushed
out of the bush, seen vaguely as potenti al form, and
pursued, pursued and perceived, declared: the savored
form, the known possession, knowledge carnal knowledge:
the seizure, the sati ati on : the heavy jaguar ta kes the
burro down for a foreleg or so: then, the li ghter,
though still heavy, vultures pull and gulp: then, the
tight-bow ed bl ack crows peck and scratch: then ants
come out and run about the structure, pi cking bits:
finall y, leas t bacteria boil the last grease mild:
