A. R. Ammons

Poet Class of June 1981
Portrait of A. R. Ammons
location icon Location
Ithaca, New York
age iconAge
55 at time of award
age iconDate Deceased
February 25, 2001
area of focus iconArea of Focus

A. R. Ammons was a poet.

Among the most prolific of American poets, he began writing poetry in earnest while serving in the United States Navy during the Second World War.  His poems are experimental in style and focus on the dilemma of reinventing the self.  Ammons’ books include Corsons Inlet (1965), Tape for the Turn of Year (1965), Sphere (1974), The Snow Poems (1977), A Coast of Trees (1981), Worldly Hopes (1982), Lake Effect Country (1983), Selected Poems (1987), Sumerian Vistas (1987), The Really Short Poems of A. R. Ammons (1990), Garbage (1993), Rarities (1994), Stand-in (1994), The North Carolina Poems (1994), Brink Road: Poems (1996), and Glare (1997).

Ammons taught at Cornell University, where he was the Goldwin Smith Professor Emeritus of Poetry.  He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1966), and a Lannan Foundation Grant for Poetry (1994).  He numbers among his awards the National Book Award for poetry (1973, 1993), the Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1974), the National Book Critics Circle Award (1981), the Library of Congress Bobbitt Prize (1994), and the Ruth Lilly Prize for Poetry (1995).

Ammons received a B.S. (1949) from Wake Forest College, and later studied English at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Last updated January 1, 2005.

Published on June 1, 1981

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