TOP11-DES10
This Old Poem #11:
A.R. Ammons’ An Improvisation For Angular Momentum
Copyright © by Dan Schneider,
7/27/02
1 of the
ballsiest things to occur in the published world of poetry was the release of a
book length poem by the recently-deceased A.R. Ammons called Garbage.
It’s too easy to go where you know I can. That the same title would be apropos
for his inevitable Collected Poems should, likewise, be obvious. But, Garbage won a National Book Award. It’s a dull poem of over 100 pages,
in 18 sections of unrhymed couplets. What follows is typical of the poem &
the poet’s whole oeuvre:
...and meanwhile
a truck already arrived spills its goods from
the back hatch
and the birds as in a single computer-
formed net plunge in celebration, hallelujahs
of rejoicing...
Note how ARA’s images are strained & discombobulated. But you
quoted out of context! No, but a gaze at the poem under discussion (below) will
confirm what I’ve just said. ARA is also 1 of those artists who is known for 1
thing- he once typed a whole poem on an adding machine’s roll, letting the
‘natural’ stricture govern the line length of the poem. Was this a
breakthrough? Hardly. Gimmickry has always been a part of the arts.
Generally ARA
is known for his colloquialism & infusion of science into his poems. He will
have an image never seen before in poetry followed by a page & a ½ of
poorly wrought & enjambed clichés. Too often ARA’s ‘science’ is
merely the awkward dropping of a phrase or idea in the middle of a poem that
could do just as well without it; unlike- say, a Pattiann Rogers, whose poetry
is dependent upon science in a more basic way. For her it’s a starting point,
whereas for ARA it’s another gimmick to show how ‘learned’ he was. This is
1 of the reasons PR is a better poet than ARA. When her poems fail it’s
usually because she’s gone on too long, or the poem is a retread of an earlier
better poem. When ARA’s poems fail it is because they are poorly thought out,
poorly constructed, unmusicked, & just plain old dull.
The poem in
question is, in many ways a typical- if not prototypical- ARA poem:
An Improvisation For Angular
Momentum
Walking is like
imagination, a
single step
dissolves the circle
into motion; the eye here
and there rests
on a leaf,
gap, or ledge,
everything flowing
except where
sight touches seen:
stop, though, and
reality snaps back
in, locked hard,
forms sharply
themselves, bushbank,
dentree, phoneline,
definite, fixed,
the self, too, then
caught real, clouds
and wind melting
into their directions,
breaking around and
over, down and out,
motions profound,
alive, musical!
Perhaps the death mother like the birth mother
does not desert us but comes to tend
and produce us, to make room for us
and bear us tenderly, considerately,
through the gates, to see us through,
to ease our pains, quell our cries,
to hover over and nestle us, to deliver
us into the greatest, most enduring
peace, all the way past the bother of
recollection,
beyond the finework of frailty,
the mishmash house of the coming & going,
creation's fringes,
the eddies and curlicues
Readers who
have been following the TOP series throughout will notice many a glaring fault
in this poem. Starting with the title- is there any way anyone believes this is
an ‘improvisation’? Is this supposed to justify the poor structure- because
it’s a de facto 1st draft? No. So, let’s have at its 2 stanzas.
Stanza 1 is the revery, the rise, the invocation to muse. Lo! Ecstasy! Well,
perhaps were the words not so clunky & the lines not so poorly broken:
Walking
is like
imagination, a
single step
dissolves the circle
into motion; the eye here
and there rests
on a leaf,
gap,
or ledge,
everything flowing
except where
sight touches seen:
stop, though, and
reality snaps back
in, locked hard,
forms sharply
themselves, bushbank,
dentree, phoneline,
definite, fixed,
the self, too, then
caught real, clouds
and wind melting
into their directions,
breaking around and
over, down and out,
motions profound,
alive, musical!
Immediately
this query springs forth: why are the 1st 2 lines broken at
‘like’ & ‘a’? What possible reason save laziness? The words which
follow, on the next lines, ‘imagination’ & ‘single’ are not so
provocative that it justifies the break. Now look at this sequence (rebroken):
reality snaps back/in, locked hard,
forms
sharply/themselves, bushbank,
dentree, phoneline,/definite, fixed,
the self, too, then/caught real, clouds
and wind melting/into their directions,
breaking around and/over, down and out,
motions profound,/alive, musical!
Who does this
remind you of- in a pale knock-off sort of way? Yes, Wallace Stevens- except
that it’s void of music, intellect, style, &- most of all- fun.
On to stanza
2:
Perhaps the death mother
like the birth mother
does not desert us but comes to tend
and produce us, to make room for us
and bear us tenderly, considerately,
through
the gates,
to see us through,
to
ease our pains, quell our cries,
to hover over and nestle us, to deliver
us
into
the greatest, most enduring
peace,
all the way past the bother of
recollection,
beyond the finework of frailty,
the mishmash house of the coming & going,
creation's fringes,
the eddies and curlicues
There is
nothing that grabs us her, nothing we have not seen before when a poet tries to
be ‘deep’. But why the excess thes & tos?
Absolutely no reason. Let’s not even talk about the clichés- look back as I
underline them! By my count 9 in 14 lines- or more than 1 for every line & a
½. Let’s tidy up this slowly deflating mishmash.
For Angular Momentum
Walking is
imagination,
a step
dissolves
into motion;
the eye
on a leaf,
gap, or ledge,
flowing
except sight touches:
reality snaps
in, hard
forms fixed,
the self, too,
into directions,
breaking over,
down and out,
alive, musical!
Perhaps death, mother,
like birth, mother,
does not desert
but comes to tend,
to make room,
to hover over and nestle us,
into the greatest peace,
past the bother of recollection,
the finework of frailty,
the mishmash house
of the coming & the going,
creation's fringes,
eddies and curlicues
To start with
the title is less smug, & opens itself more to the reader’s own imbuement.
In the poem’s 1st ½ we’ve gotten rid of the many redundancies
& poor enjambment. In the 2nd ½ we invert the ‘mother’ clichés
by an excellent, & intriguing use of commas- punctuation is a sorely
undervalued poetic tool. Nonetheless the person hearing the poem- & some
reading it, too- will hear the comforting clichés but it will literally read
differently. The repetition in this version is not clichéd but almost sardonic
& angry. By adding the word the in front of going we re-inject some
of the attempted Biblical invocations ARA strained with in the original’s use
of Scriptural-sounding clichés- yet with just a single word’s addition, as
the cliché is still there- yet less egregious once the others have been
excised.
The basic
flaw in this poem- & all ARA’s poems- is that he has no real grasp on
reality- he cannot describe the real world- which is not necessarily bad, were
his mindly realm- ala Wally’s, worth entering. But it’s not. Many other
‘idea’ poets exist- but those who succeed- say, a Hart Crane or Rainer Maria
Rilke, succeed because they had mastered mere descriptive poetry & chose to
go beyond. ARA never did this. From his earliest published poems right up till
his death he was still awash in description & metaphor- of description &
metaphor! In other words- there was nothing for a reader to latch on to. While
Crane’s poetry soared into ‘the eddies and curlicues’ of ecstasy, &
Rilke’s poetry cored in ‘to ease our pains, quell our cries’, ARA’s
merely said that was its aims, & just sat there, lumpishly.
If a poet is
not willing to meet their readers even ½way to entertain, then the readers have
no obligation to give the poet the benefit of the doubt that the poem’s
initial failure might be due to their misreading. On that note I decline to
explicate any further.
Final Score: (1-100):
A.R. Ammons’ An Improvisation For Angular Momentum:
55
TOP’s
For Angular Momentum: 68
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