Considering the Radiance Essays on the Poetry of A. R. Ammons

“A. R. Ammons has exploded into the company of American poets that includes Whitman and Emerson and articulates the major impulse of the national expression: the paradox of poetry as process and yet impediment to process.”

This intimate collection of essays addressed to the common reader pays tribute to one of the twentieth century’s major poets. Encompassing every phase of A. R. Ammons’s oeuvre, from his beginnings in the 1950s to his late masterpieces, Garbage and Glare, this book of essays explores the personal side of a poet often still seen as forbiddingly abstract and intellectual. Included are essays by Helen Vendler, Alice Fulton, Harold Bloom, and John Ashbery, among others.

Roger Gilbert is a professor at Cornell University and lives in Ithaca, New York. David Burak teaches at Santa Monica College and lives in Santa Monica, California.