Uplands New Poems A. R. AMMONS SHE. Jeb Zo Atala ee Rec dg erp cand ctese| ah! W-W-NORTON & COMPANY -INC - NEW YORK “Contents Snow Log | Urpland J a ey Furth 0 Hope's Okay / 7 Life in the Boondocks 3 Spiel2 / Guitar Recitativos ate Laser Virtu 32> Apologia pro Vita Sua @ 6 Offset 27 ~ asi Holly £4 Small Song o-7 tebe 9 ee Along a Line of Difference 4& ascadilla Fallls40 Summer Session 1968_52. Job /é 3 The to a 40c~ dant OF } Date # esr “fhe ‘ | Show ji> — Sin2 By the same author fee Expressions of Sea Level Corsons Inlet Tape for the Turn of the Year Northfield Poems Selected Poems Briefings a O10W Proof ‘ | Commeciiosd Oe Er — For the Editor: Signed contract in house? Yes: Me Bos. i. es 3 Any of material previously published? Yes.>).... NB 7s Rrgerge j vs f Tf Yes" have permissions been cleared? bean prea ete” RS tN a Peres + AAS oT PRINTER: “Copy for “Copyright Biba ge. ie e ee tA — a as shown below double line. Prepared by. Set eile bs ted ie ee Editor, ..- mall willowsand alder brush va : }mre 2. Le?tered MX, % anwieMark mittout | et 9 } on the & wind talks oe nts ‘ Af cr dete 4 ; re way oy y \ —— YOR y 4% “—~*en Gotz £2LVOCZE tongues away i LekKS ae Wiil seream and then ilost eand die Talalcone: . és “it's we “ . summer now: 7% i, eee! eas eee vindicoae Baa ix Prana CNne f Len MEeSCQOWSs: ae ae coy rem 3 ry Me tft efvs@ a all pan ts‘ns Pee) a%, igh as @ moose's @ars: lichen, a wintery weed, fills out for the brittle sleep: ~ + erasing) weed lunder the shsllows w ateroirds plunder the shallows. . / a eae f a peal f } —' al Hope's Okay The undergrowth's a conveyance of butterflies (flusters of clustering) so buoyant and delightful, filling into a floatine impression, diversity's diversion breaking out into pra ag Seas point by point to che mind's nodes and needs: let's see, though, aia the fire through the undergrowth, what all this makes into, what difference can and could not help many a gray, smoke al + : : 4 2s tame oY. a a can much that was here IT said is lost and if I stoop ins %. . cea 4 ri I ae to ask bright thoughts of roots . acre TN Epes ea ae Fa Bd F 4 ees t 16 not ft iria 2 @84-29 Tier toan was here or that hope with m the former growth (hig a 3 that despair came any closer than ash to bein Fig a j Sf FS eel ye fd ; SP : a il / Mfr V4 me FAN fF da Ay as ‘ LP ; j y, Je i + 7 A a a J rs vA ithaca, N eo * A ered z X NisA. First Boondocks oe & ha a a ees ‘— au kh i a he Fs 2 TICS I "LENG : Untouched ers td se na bey 35 “ ? ee Le large=Lobsed hing in brook . Water, 3 © SLT, middiness lof ted mr ™ Pee ee. Boone eae7 ew PL An Lo Lind. _. Ke 4 the mornines elk there and a i wee Rage Critter wi : eile y a5 ela isn PMS Sra wer OF tint pw emace the eagle dins into scary nothineness, vr? os . 2D irc es a Gre ui wom re slat ave Oli g@& OLUTI over canvon nelents: seam tiimw dt emer 448 + Fyoee, @has wes hh “ot 4 , plunder wide i. TQ ; iD, ebb eh eg Ly p L} es shallows Risa ae ei PEALE oo Seep ge ‘om on, white:/Tiladies come out in the gold=true sun ne a . 5 re ae ae ees 7 on. oe " and 2397 as white boulders tn the cy 4 ry ye ot ae A sian fasr tardy t{— a} 5} Te 2h ON LTMMealatve Paaia = OY Cn Wanner Liang streeams:!|. [5 htave heen there so + wae "neck * as > e ae ee 5 tod Owe faa bony om ~ waa tance t A » bag sie di i ioe . often,. so of and heid the women, scueezed, 2 ee } ” 4 . 3 2 Sate a s 5 be - it | & ‘ares 7 rat. Fe Time FI CLE sf a Ux Yr # tick ES 1 Ba ate. Ai le 4, EiIe i af FO oS Pal Ta ef ie maka 3 2 “a ° drone of SFbees SO OL. ee ST are | ay mo s&s Lur is snow=we t 1 t——~Ro~d oe 606-Hanshaw--Road © Ithaca; New-York SPIEL yee” a ee where ‘\a nr the mind's not traveled ye but a botch:(ibut spelled out any | spiel can pick enough surfage up | |to drum a sea loose) I just ate a green banana:/ Jit is in me now mushed and gushy:| there is nothing small enough to conjure clarity with: take the bathroom spider wintered thin: so thin bleached out against walls life seems in him a brown taint that lacking might make him water or crisp: he spun an open-ended house (safety, closed up to perfection, _| traps, he knows) in the ceilingwall sharp ++ (well then I will take a mere dancing to the right, left, a multimedial parlance: well I will take just the angle the waves come out of the sea, say, the way they break down their length in a continuous moving roar: I don't care how many drops of water there are or how totally they are water or how the ocean is nothing (figuratively speaking) else:/l/I identify waves, they have an action, many actions:{7|I've seen them come straight in, crest first in the middle, break outward both ways and leave behind a pyramid of foam: I've never seen a drop of water do that:) Bee at night he rides down to the white sink and hums in a drop of water's uptight edge:{JiItry to think Ee ae what he eats 3 ve so winter skinny, such a bugless winter:/Timaybe those tiny book lice leave learning scoot ceilings sometimes and suffer the usual confrontation with reality: or I think dandruff scales soaked in droplets | drift dripping proteins loose that drunk skirl spiders into halleiujahs (lof darkening: “‘t Dreads ayict, ® from the stateof distress a pill can remove you:(|-meanwhile the blue spruce is perilously oo bk 3 it's monsterless here: the bayberry in a green sweep, breeze lively: indifferent as Lace: +t swipes, swatches, smears, luminous samplers:/|what is4 the existence in the argument of what the argument is about:; precise but unspecified, SPIEL. / I/ hunted out, turned from, disguised, brunted: Per Pe a a order, strict, is the shadow of flight: I mean because of the lusterless structure ~_ is the port of extreme navigation: ie where footprints disappear at the edge of melting snow hesitation breaks mindfully into itself: the fairgrounds (hill meadows , as lant r|{triangular sweepclosings of heights, | serub fringes, yangs of woods, _|lovely sumac and sassafras, golden clumps of grass _|rising to a wind line, commas, the pheasant's tail, long, : fy? perfect for disappearance in ae hee ¥] WU ‘ee 2 4 or “ winter weeds, clumpy printwork Wy : of rabbits AN over many oeee floats of snow. . . % JAM \ he ai L “Ap I don't know what all there is | but there's more than plenty and that's just it there's too much except for, there'd be too much jexcept for the outgrowth of soothing hills) sporting goods nip and tuck scoops scopes scrimps & scroungings 4-h> ~tmtions a 2 1S B Guitar Recitativos 1 I know you love me, baby I know it by the way you carry on around here certain times _ of the day and night I can make the distinction between the willing and the unrefusable That's not what I'm talking about That's not what I need What I mean is could you just peel me a few of those grapes “over there I want to lie here cool and accumulate Oh say about half a bunch That's what I need--flick out those little secd=— Just drop them in here one at a time I'm not going anyplace, baby, not today Relax--sneak the skin off a few of those grapes for me, will you? 2 Baby, you been aca round on my “See@ so long they breaking out in: black and blue hyacinths, well-knit forget=me=nots Geraniums are flopping out over the tops of my shoes tendril leaves coming cut along the edges of my shoelaces Gladioli are steering out of the small of my back strumming those cool stalks up my spine Zinnias radiating from the crock of my neck and petunias swinging down bells from my earlobes All this stomping around on me you »een doing, baby, I'm gonna break out in a colorful reaction I'm gonna wade right through you with the thorns of all these big red roses 3 I'm tired of the you=and=me thing I am for more research into the nature of the amorous bond the discovery of catalysts for speeding=up, wearing out, and getting it over with or for slowing it down to allow long intervals of looseness Baby, there are times when the mixture becomes immiscible Guitar Recitativos p 2 Ash —-Aammons and other times we get so stirred up I can't tell whether I'm you or me and then I have this fear of a surprising reaction in which we both turn into something else powdery or gaseous or slightly metallic What 1 mean is this whole relationship is, lacking further knowledge, risky: (\while there's still time, why don't you get yourself together and I'll get myself together and then we'll sort of shy out of each other's gravitational field, unstring the electromagnetism, and then sort of just drop this whole orientation, baby 4 I can tell you what I think of your beauty, baby, you have it, it's keen and fast, there's this glittery sword whipping about your head all day and, baby, you make people snap--you condescend and a surprised little heart splatiers or you turn your cold head away and a tiny freeze kills a few cells in some man's brain--I mean, baby, you may be kind but your beauty, sweetie, is such many a man would run himself through for hating your guts every minute that he died for you 2 You come in and I turn on: freon purrs and the refrigerator breaks out with hives of ice: the Westinghouse portable electric fan flushes my papers all over the room: the waffle=iron whacks down sizzling imaginary waffles: one paper glues itself and billows to the back of the fan, my nerves nervous as newspapers: I tell you, you are a walking calamity and when you sit down there is hardly less activity: the alarm clock breaks out raging its held cry Guitar Recitativos p 3 Ay ts Ammons and the oven in the kitchen sets itself for broil: I mean the gas—jet in the incinerator bloops on and, frankly, the mechanisms in my legs--I hope you never find out--jerk: Oh, beauty, beauty is so disturbingly nice. Laser An image comes and the mind's light, confused as that on surf or ocean shelves, gathers up, parallelizes, focuses and in a rigid beam illuminates the image: the head seeks in itself fragments of left-over light to cast a new direction, any direction, to strike and fix a random, contradicting image: but any found image falls back to darkness or the lesser beams splinter and go out: the mind tries to dream of diversity, of mountain rapids shattered with sound and light, of wind fracturing brush or bursting out of order against a mountain range:> but the focused beam folds all energy in: the image glares filling all space: the head falls and hangs and cannot wake itself. A.-R.. Ammons TZ, <3 ve & P= Virtu Make a motion the wind said and the mountain strained hard but couldn't even quiver: so the wind curved and shook the poplars: a slope pebble loosened and struck down sharp goings: the mountain stunned at being moved nearly broke with grief and the wind whirled up the valley over the stream and trees utterly unlost in emptiness, As R. Ammons Choice Idling through the mean space dozing, blurred by indirection, I came upon a stairwell and steadied a moment to think against the stem: upward turned golden steps and downward dark steps entered the dark: unused to other than even ground I spurned the airless heights though bright and the rigor to lift an immaterial soul and sank sliding in a smooth rail whirl and fell asleep in the inundating dark but waking said god abhors me but went on down obeying at least the universal law of gravity: millenniums later waking in a lightened air I shivered in high purity and still descending grappled with the god that , rolls up circles of our linear sight in crippling disciplines tighter than any climb. A. R. Ammons Body Politic Out for stars he took some down and we all wondered if he might be damned to such sinister & successful enterprise: we took and unfolded him: he turned out pliant and warm & messy in some minor way: then, not having come to much we lit into his stars which declaring nothing dark held white and high and brought us down. A. R. Ammons Apologia pro Vita Sua A. R. Ammons otek Offset Losing information he rose gaining view Cath 2t total loss gain was extreme: extreme & invisible: the eye seeing nothing lost its separation: self-song (that is a mere motion) fanned out into failing swirls slowed & became continuum, &N\yid ~As-R. Ammons Mountain Talk so I went on counting my numberless fingers, R. Ammons ; NNa Impulse If a rock on the slope loosens tonight will it be because rain's unearthed another grain or a root arched for room and will a tree or rock be right there, or two rocks or trees, to hold the flashed decision back? I want something suited to my special needs I want chrome hubcaps, pin=on attachments and year round use year after year I want a workhorse with smooth uniform cut, dozer blade and snow blade & deluxe steering wheel I want something to mow, throw snow, tow and sow with I want precision reel blades I want a console styled dashboard I want an easy spintype recoil starter I want combination bevel and spur gears, 14 gauge stamped steel housing and washable foam element air cleaner I want a pivoting front axle and extrawide turf tires I want an inch of foam rubber inside a vinyl covering and especially if it's not too much, if I can deserve it, even if I can't pay for it I want to mow while riding. Help From the inlet surf a father pulls in a crab— a wonderful machinery but not a fish: kicks it off the line & up the beach where three daughters and two sons take turns bringing cups of water to keep alive, to watch work, the sanded & dis jeweled. Love Song A. R. Ammons Love Song (2) Rings of birch bark stand in the woods still circling the nearly vanished log: after we go to pass: through log and star this white song will hug us together in the woods of some lover's head, Mule Song Silver will lie where she lies Ssun-out, whatever turning the world does, longeared in her ashen, earless, floating world: indifferent to sores and greenage colic, where oats need not come. TO. bleached by crystals of her trembling time: beyond all brunt of seasons, blind forever to all blinds, inhabited by brooks still she may wraith over broken fields after winter or roll in the rye-green fields: old mule, no defense but a mule's against disease, large=ribbed, flat-toothed, sold to a stranger, shot by a stranger's hand, not my hand she nuzzled the seasoning-salt from. Script The blackbird takes out from the thicket down there uphill toward the house, shoots through a vacancy in the elm tree & bolts over the house: some circling leaves waving record size, direction, and speed. A. R.. Ammons Holly The hollybush flowers small whites (become of course berries) four tiny petals turned back and four anthers stuck out: the pistil low & honey-high: wasp-bees (those small wasps or bees) come around with a glee too fine to hear: when the wind dies at dusk, silence, unaffronted, puts a robe slightly thinner than sight over all the flowers so darkness & —the terrible stars will not hurt them. Small Song The reeds give way to the wind and give the wind away A. R. Ammons Possibility Along a Line of Difference At the crustal discontinuity I went down and walked on the gravel botton, head below gully rims tufted with clumpgrass and through-free roots: prairie flatness crazed by that difference, I grew excited with the stream's image left in dust and farther down in confined rambling i found a puddle green, iridescent with a visitation of daub=singing wasps, sat down and watched tilted shadow untilting fill the trough, imagined cloudbursts and scattered pillars of rain, buffalo at night routed by lightning, leaping, falling back, wobble=kneed calves tumbling, gully-caught ; hry Lurch ) rw) ~ ) coyote, crisp=footed : } f NS on the gravel, loping up the difference. Cascadilla Falls I went down by Cascadilla Falls this evening, the Stream below the falls, and picked up a handsized stone kidney-shaped, testicular, and the stone to dead rest: the stream from other motions broke rushing over it: shelterless, I turned Aj RY Ammons 606° Manshaw—Ré-ithaca; hs, = Summer Session 1968 Saliences are humming bee paths in & out srounc here, continuous if _7 unpredictable: [ithey hang the air with cotton candy and make a neighborhood: e set out four tomato plants a while ago: i.good soil where a row of winter=used cut wood was: I've been out several times to see but coming dark hinders me, forcing faith up which must spindly as high walloping weeds outlast the night: earlier came a shower so skinny . not a coil spring in the glass pond rang the periphery, for a minute: walking home from class: dogs yurping out from hedge tunnels, jerking to snagzy, skidding halts, an outrage about the legs, hairy explosion with central, floating teeth: I hope snitching hairy little worms will thread their eyelids and distending close off the eyeballs of flagrant sight the way summer closed up the hedges to fill 3 us with surprises: in my yard's more wordage than I can read: the jaybird gives a shit: the earthworm hoe=split bleeds SS-1968 p 2 Bon Re Ammons against a damp black clump: the problem is how to keep shape and flow: Be the day's died ‘ can't |be re=made: in the dusk I can't recover the goldenbodied fly that waited on a sunfield leaf: well I can't recover the light: in ny head-;on the 7 * ae . : inside frontal wall--—the fly waits and then, as he did, darts upward at an air=hung compa anon: ghosts remain, essences out=skinnying light:! essences perceiving ghosts skinny skinny percipients: POVERENGR) which one cannot Wie ihhold, is laid on lightly, with terror--as if one were holding a dandelion back into the sun: pier answer 3 ct hese shapes my bones to areee to go on consuming, the flowers, venations, vines, the roots that know their Ways going to go on taking down and re=designing, are going to go on stridently with bunchers & shears devouring sundry flesh:but their mud, | own shapes will, as will all shapes, break but will with all others east design ahead where possible, hold figuration in the cast seed: shape &. flow: we must not feel hostile: the most perfect nothingness affords SS_1968 p..3-. Ao Rs~-Ammons the widest play, the most perfect meaninglessness: look up at dusk and see es the bead fuzzy—buazy bug no darker than mist: couldn't get along at all except against infinity: inne 4s sswallow, 9a aLne in a rush=< never know what hit him nothing hit him sent him to nothing: but the temporary marvels!-—-~ getting along against .|..le al . pa ee % take it fro there: (to slink and dream with the interior singing attention of then ees la a a OURS ape nae eee ota oanm as a dream, a stream, sameness a ‘ai vacen, colorful, sunlit glints and glimmerings: can motion alone then hold you, strangk person: entertainments of flame and water, flame in water, an honorable, ancient f4adme removed in high burning:!/\water no less « metal of SHOBT ONE, subtly obeying: ‘sit down and be consoled: the death that reaches toward you has been spared none: be enchanted with the shrill hunger of distant children: do something: the boughs ripen: birds falling out around here like plums, rolling around, tilting over, turbulent somersaults, a wrestling with divinity, smooth & mostly belly: the tail's a mean instrument but feathered gives poise, as of contrary knowledges: the cats frizzling with interest tone S5~-1968 ph” Ay Rs —Ammons a en j ee et “ A Té# down to pure motion:| songs go such way: destruction of the world into the guts: regeneration: the kill is a restless matter: but afterwards the fact's cool as satiation: we just had lunch at the picnic table under the elm:/ chunks of cant#loupe peach slices, blueberries, all cool colorings in a glass cup: hotdogs& pepsi: brilliant replenishment icy destructions with the burst, the teeth in a freshet of cant@loupe juice: the robin's nest, way out on a pear limb, nearly overnengs the table: some worry, of course, a chirp or two: distant approaches: jiabove, the yellow triangles of mouths: up the stairs you go up the stairs you go beddybye & sneozy snooze up the stairs you go ho ho up the stairs you go now the lawnmowers of reality are whirring on the slopes of absent Jawns and sunday is in the world or part of it: I look across the valley to the otherside big hills and realize the whole thing's rolling tumbling in the smoothest quietest lunge, ows ow bristlegreen rocksnip, our clamorous house wherein difference bites so hard hardly aman will admit the common nickelodean core where metals tirkat j Sn slow drifts of warping pressure: —— nevertheless into raw 88-1968 -p-$> 4 Ry Ammons | sme Y space we turn, sun feeding cosmic drift through, expelling radiance of cosmic storm, and we are at an incredible height going round something: in the whole coming and going of man we may not get around once: at certain levels recurrence is not a bore:/jiwe clip an are: buttered batter's better bitter: what do you know: Western Prong beat Old Dock: stir up them little wasps and you have a nest of hornets: past 21 women suffer unbearably (1) take bladder irritation: that headachy backachy feeling: that burning stitching itching gives them the weewee's, makes them need fast relaxing comfort: what women zo through to make or lose a buck: in those ample haunches greased with sheer illumination's light is a mess of bacterial bloomers: [it's merciful to lust the eye's small} “~ ms ™, fr Ka hings are off: levelinghate 3 Pe pane . wide, e¢specially open, disparities: eouLllibrium fills feed in a grocery a somebody: feed in how to fix a telescope on, say, a comet: feed ina few large pieces of legislation, * reports, notes, triptickets, sailing schedules, the dawns & dusks of planets, contemplations of sauirrels: somewhere along the line the computer couple committee lab some SS-1968p 10 is going to perpetrate a large announcement: then we']1 know why the imagination's winding no scraps up into windy transfigurations: in our day comfort is sunrise at 5:25: couple systems analysts: > bushel of female ticks, engorged: some dirty tw oO rats: | cutwornms: nightfeeders that dusk arouses: cubie mile of infestation, corruption, rust, pus, pus aterpillars, not: ank of wound weepage: boxcar of love salt, fill, siftings, winnowings, dregs, curds, chips, aerosols of eagerness, dozen black Widows: a league of universal ivy stone: choice: much testament of need: 400 Singing horses, a flask of wart=juice from the udders of the awry: families with a lot of living to do: should get turouoise, shaded coppertone, or spanish avocado: features for fun=loving families: discover for yourselves where the problems are & amass F “ = ~ my oh my 2 vp Lys * alternative strategies: otherwise it's De & no pussy: # re £% * a PO nie PAY. us 7 inanxs very Th on de t muc at's a I seribble, baby, I mear I breeze on: every mile a twist, I should be back: a smidgen slit of silence lets all in: the land's turning tables ~S$S-1968 pti 4. R, Ammons greased with the finest silence money can buy, st ill, the wind, mine & its, rattles overt the ridges, splits the cords of — & gris tle: to a cartograph part of Mapaviv eutas a broken record: curving grooves & ridges in visual music: day after day the camels of the rain bear their gray way by: [ithe ditches bend green grass in: but then drought enlarges in rapids the incidence of rocks: but then flood, so salient, though with muscle swirls, could scrape you across a single prominence, splitting possibility like a paper shell: it is, even after an & 3 I'll look significant as I deal with mere wires of light, ghosts of cells, working there. atin oe Me page PIES Hy sag 884 Ss aaa Pipe lee ag aI Rigi ES wy taiKSA 2 ELAM I , ; sade : pated saa saa Sten SireSNIIMERA MAGES PapeHAH hak Ait 2} ‘ > Re . s Bt inlets Tel oe tori SEER55 MII : ati insta en eeraa 36h cI 3 of AICO EE cars ri ai atin MIF ret ba NSO LO cat