SOURCE: "An Interview with A. R. Ammons," in Michigan Quarterly Review, Vol. XXVIII, No. 1, Winter, 1989, pp. 105-17.

In the following interview, conducted March 6, 1988 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Ammons discusses his life, work, and view of poetry.

When A. R. Ammons's Collected Poems 1951–1971 appeared in 1972, Geoffrey H. Hartman wrote in The New York Times Book Review that it was "a remarkable book … his distinction as a major American poet will now be evident." A critical consensus has formed since then that Ammons is indeed one of the most important poets in our contemporary literature. He has published some seventeen volumes, including the Collected Poems (winner of the National Book Award for Poetry), Sphere: The Form of a Motion (winner of the 1973–1974 Bollingen Prize in Poetry), A Coast of Trees (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, 1981), The Snow Poems, Corsons Inlet, Diversifications, and most recently The...