Brink Road

by A.R. Ammons

Book Overview

This collection of poems deals with the author's lifelong concerns with language, mortality and the natural world.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393039587
• ISBN13: 9780393039580
• Release Date: July 1996
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 230 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Varied scenery on this road

There are a diversity of poems in this collection from 1973 to 1996. As he says "You mosey around, idling here and there for years". Along this route are some of the joys of nature, in the poem Local Antiquities: "the hills, out in the rain, antedate altars". Ammons also stops to examine him age, "I'm too rickety to squat" or perhaps to look at his directions: "I've pressed so far away from my desire ..". There are also road signs about poetry "Poems are forms of protective coloration by which a person insecure in his true colors takes trial stances ...". There are short stretches of road such as the 11 syllable "The Story" to the final long hall, a 45 page poem "Summer Place" "so full of crazy ironies" that includes rebelling about being called a "nature poet" and "why no one expects to pay the poet" and "bowling champions make 12 times as much as poets", and lecherous views of "coeds with the pear-like rondure". By the way Brink Road "lies off NY 96 between Candor and Catatonk"