a celebration of the work of A. R. Ammons November 15

single threads unbraided
a celebration of the work of A. R. Ammons
November 15 -16,2010
Z. Smith Reynolds Library
Wake Forest University
Winston-Salem. NC
• WAKE FOREST
NORTH CAROLINA
HUMANITIES
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U N I V E R S I T Y
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Z. Smith Reynolds Library
Wake Forest University
"single threads unbraided"
a celebration of the work of A. R. Amnions
November 15-16,2010
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2010
^
^:00 pm Preliminary Remarks, Lynn Sutton, Dean, Z Smith Reynolds Library
Welcome and Introduction,
Nathan O. Hatck President, Wake Forest University^
Keynote Address, "Amnions Last Poems"
Helen Vendler, A. Kingsley Porter University Professor,
Harvard University
Pugh Auditorium, Benson Center
2:00 pm "A New Walk Is a New Walk: Teaching Poetry in the 21st Centiw'
Eric Wilson, Thomas H. Pritchard Professor of English,
Wake Forest University
Pugh Auditorium, Benson Center
3:00 pm "Archie's Teachers"
Roger Gilbert, Professor, Cornell University
Pugh Auditorium, Benson Center
4:00 pm Reception and opening of Ammons Gallery
Remarks, Jill Tiefenthaler, Provost, Wake Forest University
Room 401, Z. Smith Reynolds Library
5:30 pm Dinner honoring North Carolina poets- (paid event)
Lobby, Scales Fine Arts Center
7:30 pm "Here to Become Forever"
Original One-Act PlayJfeaturing Michael Huie
Ring Theatre, Scalesj^ine Arts Center
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2010
9:00 am
"Discovering a Singularity"
Elizabeth Mills, Professor, Davidson College and
Heather Childress, Curator, Office of University Art Collections,
Wake Forest University
Room 401, Benson Center
10:00 am "Tve brought / you everything': Toward A. R. Ammons's Complete Poems"
Interview with Robert West, Associate Professor, Mississippi State University
hosted by Edwin G. Wilson, Provost Emeritus, Wake Forest University
Room 401, Benson Center
11:00 am "'When Nothing is Diminished': Archie Ammons as Friend,
Teacher, and Poet"
Kenneth McClane, W.E.B. DuBois Professor of Literature,
Cornell University
Room 401, Benson Center
12:00 pm Poetry Burst: Richard McBride and Wake Forest students reading
favorite Ammons poems
Room 401, Benson Center
Light refreshments served.
1:00 pm
Symposium ends
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7A Wilson Wing
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20A Manchester lull
20B KirhylUll
9 I WAKE FOREST
U N I V E R S I T Y
Parking Legend
41 M.IIIMI KeMden.e Mill
42 Spry Softer Stadium
43 Colo HVMJ.II..- Kill
44,49,44 Chlllrr llinis
47 Greene Hall
4fl I ennis Courts
49 Polo Road Gale
90 I Iniwruiv Parkwa) (.atehouv
91 ROIVDMJ Hood (.ilrliouv
92 Milln Center
93 South KcMdmrelUII
(—| Residential/
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• J Faculty/Staff Parking
• B ( tun miner Parking
L_J (7 10am-5pm.. Mon -Prl)
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11 man Parking
Reserved Parking
• f j k Will-Owned Residential
V V Theme 1 lousing
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Visitor/Off Cam pus
Employee Parking
Visitor Parking
1 irsi Assembly Vehicle
Parking Only
Boxes
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(Emergency Phones)
NOTE If you pjrti oil of Uoiv»fvty property on
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23 I W a t Kesid.n.e Mall
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24 Huffman Roidence Mill
29 IM IK
24 AdminiuiitivT V r w r t
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29 W1PO Radio Sutlon
29 Muwiim of Anthropology
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17 Kentrver Stadium
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Red Circles indicate parking for the Ammons events on Davis Field or in Lot A in the event of rain.
Green Circles mark the event venues, the Benson Center (6), the Z. Smith Reynolds Library (7), and the
Scales Fine Arts Center (35).
single threads unbraided
Symposium Program Committee
Heather Childress, Art Collections
Brook Davis, Theatre and Dance
Craig Fansler, Z Smith Reynolds Library
Elizabeth Skinner, Forsyth County Public Library
Chris Tumminello, Student
Emily Wilson, Community
Eric Wilson, English
Giz Womack, Z Smith Reynolds Library
Lynn Sutton, Z Smith Reynolds Library, Chair
This project is made possible in part by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council,
a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
than a smooth cutoff of things: we must not
leave the hapless helpless hopeless: who
knows when the next beautiful morning will
appear: for sure. . . .(p.70)
[Ammons, A.R. Bosh and Flapdoodle. New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
2005. Print.]
Excerpt from "Get Over It"
I guess old men aren't really good for nothing:
they can cuddle, shuffle, and look
about for where it all went: harmless, they
are attractive, gently innocent, on park benches
or subways, or on the slow side of streets:
women are reassured by them; they are witnesses
u ithout danger, guardian angels: out of the
game, earnings free, they are what they earned
before: they hardly compete at all: their toothless
mouths need no upkeep, no reconstructions,
no root canals or extraordinary measures:
it doesn't matter if their piss-burnt pants
stiffen up or if they seldom shave or use much
hot water: they are wonderfully inexpensive: (p. 31)
[Ammons, A.R. Bosh and Flapdoodle. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
2005. Print.1
Excerpt from "Get Over It"
unless, of course, something goes wrong: they
just hang out on corners or in alleys, useless,
apologetic, inexcusable, supernumerary,
invisible among the seeing: what good is a mess
of stuff on its way out, nearly out: get on
out, you might say, you're taking up room: (p. 31-32)
[Ammons, A.R. Bosh and Flapdoodle. New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
2005. Print]
Excerpt from "Rattling Freight Lines"
we got our kicks in year 96 but will the market
be heaven in ninety-seven: oops, there it
goes, poetry again: rilly quaint: (p. 139)
[Ammons, A.R. Bosh and Flapdoodle. New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
2005. Print.]
Excerpt from "That's What I Just Got Through Saying"
poetry metrical (and sometimes rimed):
so poetry, am I to think, is at least mechanically
metrical: but on the chance that tidal rhythm
which is the kind I write—prosetry—can be
allowed. I make a new word for it, probably
not new: prosetry, though, is a word for the
groundlings who are probably incapable of a
perception not a definition: I expect the
sensitive and listening to hear the music in
prosetry and be able to pick out the poetry
and then see that it prevails overall: or
else what is intelligence for: all that is
music from the past must be kept and all that
is sound given up: and new sound must ever so
subtly inform the old music (the deep silent
dynamics) and hold us safely in the arms of
our lathers, as we hold our children in our
arms: (p. 141-142)
[Amnions, A.R. Bosh and Flapdoodle. New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
2005. Print.]
Excerpt from "Way Down Upon the Woodsy Roads"
Don't you think poetry should be succinct:
not now: I think it should be discinct: it
should wander off and lose its way back and
then bump into a sign and have to walk home: (p. 157)
[Ammons. A.R. Bosh and Flapdoodle. New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
2005. Print.
Excerpt from "Way Down Upon the Woodsy Roads"
I do not
belie\ e that setting words to rhyme and meter
turns prose into poetry, and having written
some of the shortest poems, I now like to
write around largely into any precinct (not
succinct), (p. 157)
(Amnions, A.R. Bosh and Flapdoodle. New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
2005. Print.]
"America"
Eat anything: but hardly any: calories are
calories: olive oil, chocolate, nuts, raisins
-but don't be deceived about carbohydrates
and fruits: eat enough and they will make you
as slick as butter (or really excellent cheese,
say, parmesan, how delightful): but you may
eat as much of nothing as you please, believe
me: iceberg lettuce, celery stalks, sugarless
bran (watch carrots, they quickly turn to
sugar: you cannot get away with anything:
eat it and it is in you: so don't eat it: &
don't think you can eat it and wear it off
running or climbing: refuse the peanut butter
and sunflower butter and you can sit on your
butt all day and lose weight: down a few
ounces of heavyweight ice cream and
sweat your balls (if pertaining) off for hrs
to no, I say, no avail: so, eat lots of
nothing but little of anything: an occasional
piece of chocolate-chocolate cake will be all
right, why worry: lightning-lit, windswept
llrelines scythed the prairies and strung
rivers of clearing through the hardwoods,
disaster renewal, smallish weeds and bushes
getting their seeds out, grazing attracting
rabbits and buffalo, the other big light
shining in steady
(p.27-28)
[Ammons, A.R. Bosh and Flapdoodle. New
2005. Print.]
Excerpt from "Fasting"
not a gale
so constant and high but gusts that show up
out of nowhere, presences that are not there,
little twirls of leaves that scoot across the
street and then just wilt out. forms,
air-whorls that are made out of nothing
but that touch your face or rustle into the
bushes, whispering and hissing: (p. 14)
[Amnions, A.R. Bosh and Flapdoodle. New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
2005. Print.]
Excerpt from "Fasting"
motion
the closest cousin to spirit and spirit the
closest neighbor to the other world, haunted
with possibility, hope, anguish, and alarm, (p. 14)
[Amnions, A.R. Bosh and Flapdoodle. New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
2005. Print.]
"Focal L e n g t h s "
I'm largely a big joke: if somebody else
doesn't make a crack about me, I do: the
burn center in me is too steady a place to
dwell in: I go by there, throw rocks, and
laugh my head off when the windows splinter:
kaplooey: what kind of little nerd is doing
a little serious reading in there: what is
this, a library: then, I roar: all that
faked up type lining shelves like boot camp
drills: what does it have to do with anything:
did I take my bristled nest of humiliations
to heart: what kind of dunce keeps a fire
going like this: what do people mean coming
to hell to warm themselves: well, it is
warm: the fire, stoked by whatever, is truly
burning: so, that's the way I am: I just
can't keep it straight: people melt down in
the heat sometimes and weep: I just don't
know what to do: I just jump-start my pickup
and drive off: I just declare to goodness:
but I know something about burning, myself:
better laugh it off: better not believe it:
better not think it's real: it's not real:
it's so cool: actually, it's nothing: it's just
nothing: crack it up: make it go away. (p. 39-40)
[Ammons, A.R. Bosh and Flapdoodle. New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
2005. Print]
Excerpt from "Tree-Limbs Down"
The poverty of having everything is not
wanting anything: 1 trudge down the mall halls
and see nothing wanting which would pick me
up: (p. 86)
[Ammons, A.R. Bosh and Flapdoodle. New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
2005. Print.]
Excerpt from "Tree-Limbs Down"
lining
the outside of immediacy, alas, is uncertainty:
so the costly part of the crust of morning
bread is not knowing it will be there: (p.87)
[Ammons, A.R. Bosh and Flapdoodle. New York: W.W. Norton and Company
2005. Print]
Excerpt from "Tree-Limbs Down"
so I am reconciled: I
traipse my dull self down the aisles of
desire and settle for nothing, nothing wanted,
nothing spent, nothing got. (p. 87)
[Ammons, A.R. Bosh and Flapdoodle. New York: W.W. Norton and Company
2005. Print.]
Excerpt from "The Whole Situation"
1
remember an ancient Christmas morning with my
tin toy mule and milk wagon on the quilt:
I was four and that little thing tied a world
together: it was a miracle: but that is a
story too old to save.... (p. 138).
[Ammons. A.R. Bosh and Flapdoodle. New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
2005. Print]
Excerpt from "Good God"
It used to flick up so often, I called it
flicker: but now, drooping, it nods awake
or, losing it, slips back asleep: I say,
stand up there, man, but, you know, it's only
me, and it takes no threat to heart, so to
speak: it's lazier than a sick dog that won't
lift his head to sniff the wind: it has
always amused me as a serviceable irony that
the spirit, which is without substance, can
move the flesh: a thought, a sight, a scent
frizzing the wires of the mind (sounds like
substance) and the thing, you know the thing,
just reacts, warms, fills, lengthens, hardens
\\ ithout hands or lips, without touch: so we
must think of the spirit as a matter of great
force and be mindful that while it works it
works wondrously but later on in life, say,
the spirit may be willing and the flesh weak,
as you've heard said: you could suppose the
spirit at that point not very willing or it
could come up with something: or perhaps the
thing, long asleep, has fallen out of use: a
day of radical separation, a realization that
puts you back before the world began—alone:
The walls of the grave your only embrace, and
the soil you lie on all that lies on you: my
goodness: fortunately, there are remedies—
implants, injections, dirty magazines: the
world is sometimes so well provided with 2
or 3r chances, we must be amazed at the
thought fulness of so many applied to so wide
a scope of possibility and give the pisspoor
thing a chance... .(p. 42-43)
[Amnions, A.R. Bosh and Flapdoodle. New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
2005. Print.l