Book Review: The Really Short Poems of A.R. Ammons

I'm actually reading The Odyssey right now, but I took a break to read that book's polar opposite, The Really Short Poems of A.R. Ammons. Ok, I guess the polar opposite of The Odyssey would actually be something like this, but just go with me.

This book wasn't that great. I'd read Garbage a few months ago, and that was much better. This book made me realize many of the problems with short poems: there's very little room for crap and smarminess. Virgil Suarez once criticized my short poems for being too jokey and light. I was pissed at him for a while, but Ammons helped me see what he meant.

My valued book critic Doug, who just did a big lecture on Ammons, referred to this book as bathroom reading. Doug works at the Academy of American Poets, so maybe this is the type of book they actually have in the bathrooms there.

But let me give a couple of the highlights:

Their sex life

One failure on
Top of another

Exotic

Science outstrips
other modes &
reveals more of
the crux of the matter
than we can calmly
handle

Late November

The white sun
like a moth
on a string
circles the southpole.

Pebble's story

Wearing away
wears

wearing
away away

Pedagogy agog

The smart gain
knowledge

and learn to
express

themselves to join
the

world of power
where

it pays to
know

little and say
less.