[Lieberman is an American poet and critic whose verse combines the particular and the visionary in its celebration of the physical world. The long, flowing lines and eloquent language of his poems set them apart from the works of his contemporaries. Unassigned Frequencies: American Poetry in Review, 1964-1977 (1977) collects Lieberman's reviews of the works of many important contemporary poets. His most recent book, Beyond the Muse of Memory: Essays on Contemporary American Poets, continues his exploration of modern American poetry. In the following excerpt from a review of Ammons' s Expressions of Sea Level and several books by other poets, Lieberman calls attention to the talent of Ammons and James Dickey in the long poem genre.]

James Dickey and A. R. Ammons are evolving a poetic line that works wonders in the extended lyric. In composing the longer poem, most poets rely on sectional subdivisions and distinct variations in form between sections to keep the poem from growing tedious. But in so doing they jeopardize the key advantage that Dickey and Ammons get from writing on a broad scale—the unbroken flow of language.

For Ammons, words on the page weave in and out like crosscurrents in a calm river:

There is a quality of hesitation and search in the variable movement of the line down the page. The center of gravity in the lines shifts from left to right to center. In most of Ammons's poems, a sort of variable but recognizable stanza pattern emerges from the movement. In others, there is a relatively unbroken thrust down the page, as in the passage quoted….

Many a contemporary poet handles language like a mason laying a foundation for a house—the words are so many concrete blocks to be cemented into a wall. Dickey and Ammons treat language with special attention to tone, modulation, and breathing space; all are suavely managed. Particular words and phrases rarely call attention to themselves; they must swing with the abiding rhythm and movement. It is hard to conceive of this poetry being composed slowly, word by word. There is too much continuity and rhythmic sweep….

Both Dickey and Ammons tend to write very long sweeping verse sentences that read quickly. There is more technical excitement for the reader of Ammons; I find myself moving down the page and weaving back and forth simultaneously, hunting the rhythmical center of each line. It's a poetry of crosscurrents, and a reader finds he is rowing with the current and into the current at once.

A quality that makes both of these poets better able to work on a larger scale than most of their contemporaries is the extraordinary power of mind they bring to bear on experience in their poems. In both, the depth and breadth of concentration is astonishing. Surprisingly, neither poet suffers from abstractness or obscurity, two hazards that poetry which thinks very hard is usually prone to. Their poetry seems to think its way into experience and things in life, not around them, and never loses a close touch with the contours of creature, landscape, and seascape:

Ideas in the poems seem less important in themselves, more important as conveyors or conductors that lead the mind into the center of happening.

I think the extended lyric is one of the most fertile and inviting territories for the poet of today, and I hope we can look to Ammons and Dickey for more solid achievement in this genre. It will take some doing to offset the movement toward fragmentation of experience set in motion by the shorter lyrics of William Carlos Williams in the twenties, and to initiate a return to structures that are large enough to cope with our most important experiences.