SOURCE: "Antennae to Knowledge," in The Nation, Vol. 198, No. 13, March 23, 1964, pp. 304-6.

In the following review, Berry discusses Ammons's focus on knowledge in his Expressions of Sea Level, and analyzes the poet's use of form and scientific language.

In this admirable book, [Expressions of Sea Level], Mr. Ammons' aim isn't beauty, though there are poems here that I think are beautiful, and it's not the suggestiveness which is sometimes meant by the word "poetic." His aim is knowledge, the getting of it and the use of it; the art of poetry is held out to the world like an antenna. A man who is concerned with knowing must necessarily be concerned with what he does not know; and one of the principles here is an honesty which insists on clarifying the difference and will then consider what is unknown or unaccountable: "I admit to mystery / in the obvious...