I've been extremely neglectful of my reading of poetry of late. So it was with a feeling of mild guilt that I picked Volume 2 of The Complete Poems of A.R. Ammons off the shelf this evening and applied myself to the third and final section of his book of 1987, Sumerian Vistas. I'm a bit puzzled as to how exactly the various poems in this section, itself titled Motions' Holdings, are meant to cohere, if at all. They are generally dated, and the dates are very disparate - yet the first two sections of the book are clearly carefully sequenced in a Snow Poems-like manner. Having said that, I don't find the poems particularly hard work, as I did back in June with the earliest material from Volume 2.
One thing I'm struck by in relation to Ammons' work: he's not a poet I find myself wanting to quote. In part this relates to the obvious fact that the poems are intended to be read from the page, rather than to be heard in public performance. There are striking phrases here and there, but it's the cumulative power of the experience of reading Archie that points to where the action is.
Which, oddly, reminds me just a little, of the effect of Ishiguro's The Unconsoled, with which I continue to make slow but happy progress. I can't imagine anyone reading this aloud for an audiobook. The style is so markedly clumsy and ponderous that it becomes weirdly entertaining in itself. Still trying to work out what exactly it is that I'm reading.
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