Ommateum with Doxology by A.R. AmmonsW.W. Norton & Co., 2006 (Originally Dorrance and Company, 1955)

The preface to this edition quotes from an interview that Ammons gave in 1995: these poems, Ammons says, “are sometimes very rigid and ritualistic, formal and off-putting, but very strong.” The preface also quote from a letter Ammons wrote in 1954, in which he gives this definition of the title’s first word: “the complex eye of the insect with its manifold facets, each perceiving a single ray of light but in toto calling up the outlines of the object.” Many perspectives, adding up to something still hazy. There is a lot of wind in these poems, wind and deserts and oceans, dry lands and wet lands, death and life: the potential of “Hill rain/pouring from a rockpierced cloud,” and “the greenest hope/autumn ever/left this patch of reeds.”