"BOSH AND FLAPDOODLE is A. R. Ammons's last completed collection of poetry. Written over a six-week period, the book offers a series of candid, alternately hilarious and heartbreaking ruminations on age, illness, and death, while still finding room for the poet's always penetrating observations of daily life and natural events.
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
By the time of his death in 2001, Ammons had won almost every award a poet can win. A National Book Award, a Pulitzer and a MacArthur "genius" grant (among others) honored his folksy yet intellectually rewarding verse, from sprawling, apparently improvised, philosophically rich book-length poems (Garbage; Sphere) to compact collections of witty and elegant lyric (A Coast of Trees; The Really Short Poems of A.R. Ammons). Begun in 1996 and clearly intended as a unified book, this posthumous gathering splits the difference between Ammons's short and long modes, and retains the virtues of both. Individual poems (each two pages in length) in unrhymed couplets address individual topics (bodily functions; "tree-limbs down" in a storm; A.E. Housman; "leaves from/ the maple by the driveway"; money; a "bathroom window open an inch") then add up to a sadder-but-wiser, resigned-yet-cheerful sequence about old age. Raised in North Carolina, Ammons taught for decades at Cornell in upstate New York: both the Southern twang of his origins and the snowdrifts of his adopted home inform these affecting if sometimes meandering ruminations. As usual, Ammons keeps comic effects close at hand: one poem begins by confusing songs from Wales with whales' songs. And, as usual, Ammons's offhanded manner permits surprising meditations on the nature of art, emotion, the world and the self. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"No contemporary poet, in America, is likelier to become a classic than A.R. Ammons."
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
One punctuation mark (:) fits all,
By
This review is from: Bosh And Flapdoodle: Poems (Hardcover)
Recurring themes: the indignity of old age and disease, the meaning of life, the act of writing poetry, long-married life. Sometimes humorous; sometimes punny; sometimes over-reaching and demanding and more work than I'm willing to do. Ammons called this "prosetry," not poetry: Not completely accurate.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
