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aegagrus's review
4.0
Very finely done. Balances rhetorical gravitas and quirk/idiosyncracy. Also balances philosophical seriousness and freewheeling reference points/imagery. There is a lot to learn here about poetry as craft. Some choices in phrasing a bit dated.
"there is truly only meaning,
only meaning, meanings, so many meanings,
meaninglessness becomes what to make of so many
meanings: and, truly, everything is real"
casparb's review
unexpectedly one of my best reads of the month I love ammons this is a collection bursting with everything some beautiful meditations on writing a poem itself - a continuous sequence of couplets in however many sections and amazing -
…if death is so persuasive, can't life be: it is
fashionable now to mean nothing, not to exist,
because meaning doesn't hold, and we do not exist
forever; this is forever, we are now in it: our
eyes see through the round time of nearly all
of being, our minds reach out and in ten billion
years: we are in so much forever, we pay it no
mind, we'd rather think of today's shopping or
next week's day off: but we will not be in
forever forever, that is the dropout: is it
too much to be in forever a while: dead we are
out of time and forever, both: I want to get
around to where I can say I'm glad I was here,
even if I must go…
an ecopoetics or rather, more precisely, a wonderful installment in waste theory, which perhaps is a branch (or root) of the eco but I think in some ways more interesting or pertinent than the overriding. : celestial /garbage is so far the highest evidence of our /existence here ... we must undergo the sacrifice /of noticing that life has been spent into our life...
I love this stuff he's a remarkable poet and I'm excited to read more. a must
…if death is so persuasive, can't life be: it is
fashionable now to mean nothing, not to exist,
because meaning doesn't hold, and we do not exist
forever; this is forever, we are now in it: our
eyes see through the round time of nearly all
of being, our minds reach out and in ten billion
years: we are in so much forever, we pay it no
mind, we'd rather think of today's shopping or
next week's day off: but we will not be in
forever forever, that is the dropout: is it
too much to be in forever a while: dead we are
out of time and forever, both: I want to get
around to where I can say I'm glad I was here,
even if I must go…
an ecopoetics or rather, more precisely, a wonderful installment in waste theory, which perhaps is a branch (or root) of the eco but I think in some ways more interesting or pertinent than the overriding. : celestial /garbage is so far the highest evidence of our /existence here ... we must undergo the sacrifice /of noticing that life has been spent into our life...
I love this stuff he's a remarkable poet and I'm excited to read more. a must
readorrot's review against another edition
3.0
I liked a lot of the ideas this poem addresses, and I think using a landfill as a way to look at human existence is not only unique, but surprisingly relevant these days.
davidbythebay's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
I absolutely love A.R. Ammons. This was a great book-length poem about garbage. Yep. Garbage. But the beauty of Ammons is how he melds the divine and spiritual with the grounded reality surrounding us, especially nature. He plays with language here (words we use for garbage and describing garbage but which have other meanings). And there is beauty in every line Ammons writes.
allalexsbooks's review
5.0
Just brushstrokes: From cultivation to suffocation. if spring and aspen speech. if love were likely it would not be love.
Really, phew. Good.
Really, phew. Good.