SOURCE: "The Problem of Freedom and Restriction in the Poetry of A. R. Ammons," in Modern Poetry Studies, Vol. 11, Nos. 1-2, 1982, pp. 138-48.

In the following essay, Fink explores the tensions between the concepts of individuality and unity as presented in Ammons's poetry, claiming that this polarity gives rise to a political dimension in the poet's work.

A number of highly regarded contemporary poets, among them Robert Creeley, John Ashbery, and A. R. Ammons, have been accused of evading the responsibility of bringing political concerns into their writing. In his long poem, Sphere: The Form of a Motion, Ammons summarily dismisses this charge, suggesting that his readers are simply blind to the political aspect of his poetry:

 they ask me, my readers, when I'm going to go politicized or
radicalized or public when I've sat here for years singing
unattended the off-songs of the territories and the midland...