After he has published a "major" collection, a poet can be excused for some time. A few may groan a little, but nobody will long lament if he never approximates that height again. They will think that you were lucky to have been there once. It would be still more rare for a poet, in the span of seven years, to follow two "major" collections with a third. But in his new book, The Snow Poems, that is exactly what A. R. Ammons has done. In Collected Poems: 1951–1971, in Sphere: The Form of a Motion, and in The Snow Poems this prolific poet shows no signs of letting up.

In an age when most poets have pulled in their claws to confront us with mushy, probing soft paws, Ammons comes at us with his talons bared, aiming at the Universal Heart. The man's drive is unique in that it does not produce bulk at the expense of quality. Few poets match his productivity or his level of excellence. When we sit down to Ammons we need never grieve about warmed leftovers. With a painter's eye for color and detail he writes about the things he sees. You will not catch him astride the dark merely imagining—he reports and imagines. This way, for the true poet, is the one way. The risks and rewards are infinitely greater. There are pitfalls, but they are overshadowed by sustained periods of unbridled flight. Even when Ammons stumbles, even when he makes mistakes, he is never sloppy or less than completely honest about himself. He appears to be riding the crest of a wave with no descent in sight. In that state of grace it looks as if he could go on forever.

The Snow Poems contains 119 poems in which an admirable craftsmanship is indisputable. But taken together the poems also read as one long poem. The sense of the book is best assimilated through this approach. It is refreshing to encounter a contemporary long poem that is not just another self-indulgent joke, another tedious and forgettable specimen of "literature." How tired we are of encountering poems in which there is nothing more substantial than random words on a page. The Snow Poems has little to do with such a tradition.

Ammons brings to his new work familiar concerns: the ongoing, minute examination of his inexhaustible world, the continual reduction and reconstruction of the Self. There are new wrinkles as well: encroaching middle age (the poet's fiftieth year) and the gradual deterioration of memory. All are linked together by the symbolic snow. It is an apt device that functions ably on two levels. There is the level that Melville pondered in the whiteness of the whale, the sacred, white dog of the Iroquois, the white bear of the polar ice, the white stallion of the plains. "This elusive quality it is," Ishmael says, "which causes the thought of whiteness, when divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object terrible in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds." For Ammons the "object terrible in itself" is the oblivion of which Death is the gatekeeper.

Snow also functions on a more prosaic level that reminds the poet of the shutdown of exterior exertion. He finds himself deep in a severe East Coast winter. People anxiously watch the weather forecasts and bear confinement with that gritty patience familiar to those acquainted with the harshness of winter. In such a claustrophobic schema the Self cannot be ignored. The frigid solitude spurs Ammons into interior monologues, the extensive periods of talking to one's Self, into the face-to-face encounter with the terror that is the whiteness of the whale.

Conflict is at the center of poetry. No poem can be successful without it. The poem must do more than settle for a presentational approach. It is not enough to say, "this is conflict—I'm done." A poet has to work it out in an objective way that comprehends both sides. A poet must be Cain and Abel. Therein tension lies, and that makes the poem go.

The ability to create tension and sustain it is sadly missing from much contemporary poetry. Whether poets have forgotten how to develop tension in their work or whether they even recognize it in themselves I cannot say. It is enough for me that Ammons is not plagued by this difficulty…. [The poem "This Is"] is an Ammons trademark: the toughminded treatment of the modern, suburban man. It is no subjective observation from a poet hunched in a corner, drooling with self-pity, pounding a gavel to certify each arbitrary notion that comes to mind. His compassion is unquestionable. Even the most skeptical reader must see that Ammons fully comprehends both sides [of every conflict]. (pp. 203-04)

In the hands of this poet there is a poignant grandeur, far from pity, that marks [the] peculiar American inability to make contact…. We make money. We take out the garbage and never quite feel that we are doing it correctly. We pull out weeds and drive our children to school. We attend meetings and watch television and make more money … and we are terribly alone. Ammons feels the weight of this dilemma and yet, he heroically transcends it. It is the major Whitmanesque achievement of an uncommonly big-hearted man who embraces his country and sees in it the material for a still better place.

How does Ammons do it?… Often he will write in the conversational modes he is used to hearing. The language is simple, clear and pliant. It is occasionally wrenched by contemporary words of science, words like "Curvature," "Numeration," "interpenetrations," "discontinuity," and "differentiation." Normally, such words in a poem make me shudder. But when Ammons uses them I merely quiver cozily like a fawned-over aspic. In short, we see this poet doing the things that you or I do every day. But he also does some things that maybe we don't do. He sits at the window, for instance, and watches a bird in a tree…. Or he watches the snow fall, transforming the houses. He watches and "snow / ghosts stand up / and walk off the roof." With Ammons' help we can see them, too…. [Ammons'] gift does not simply aim for the breadbasket. It impresses the ear as well. For Ammons has always been a first-rate lyricist. The more I read his work the more I am convinced that he can (and will) do anything with the language that he wants. He is just that precise. He has that much control and, bless him, he has an ear. Nowhere is this more obvious than in his brazen and brilliant word play. (pp. 204-05)

The overall achievement of The Snow Poems becomes more remarkable when I consider that encroaching age is a recurrent, central concern. The poet has reached his fiftieth year and must contend, in a furious winter, with the ominous implications. The comfortable promises of youth have faded. He is haunted by ghosts…. Surrounded by material gain and artistic accomplishment, by fifty years of experience and the necessity, born of instinct, to make something worthwhile out of his remaining years, Ammons meets the lonely struggle with perfect honesty. Perceiving the limitations in whatever he attempts, the poet expresses himself with the graceful ease of an eloquent river…. Ammons knows himself. What emerges is an indomitable spirit forged in conflict, tempered by compassion, ready to advance on a questionable future with confidence and delight. Richard Eberhart said on accepting last year's National Book Award: "Poets should not die for poetry but should live for it." Nobody better personifies this sentiment than Ammons. He is as huge as the country he inhabits, as compassionate as it would like to be…. (p. 205)