Garbage (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: A. R. Ammons
- First Published: 1993
- Type of Work: Poetry
- Time of Work: The 1980’s and 1990’s
- Setting: Florida
- Genres: Poetry
- Subjects: Nature, 1980’s, Human race, Spiritual life or spirituality, Idealism, 1990’s, Pollution
- Locales: Florida
Garbage is A. R. Ammons’ attempt to write a long poem, the modern equivalent of the ancient genre of the epic. The modern long poem may have a unifying theme, but it is, as Northrop Frye has suggested, a “discontinuous epic.” It relies on short lyrical sections rather than an overall narrative. It is, as Alfred, Lord Tennyson, said in In Memoriam (1850), “short swallow flights of song.”
The style that Ammons chose for the poem is significant as a structuring principle. It is written in long free-verse lines. The structural unit is the couplet, but these...
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