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A. R. Ammons : Poet-Scientist

I remember sitting in a lecture of Helen Vendler's on A. R. Ammons while I was an undergraduate and suddenly realizing that there was no natural contradiction between science and poetry. The Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) provided an unprecedented granularity of our view of nature. As alien as a cell may look microscopically, it is as much "Nature" as an impressionistic painting of a landscape. A poet who engages with "Nature" must confront what technology reveals about it as well, which is precisely what Ammons did.

Take a look at the SEM image of neurons below:

and then read Ammons' poem , "Parting." The poem seems to be informed by the SEM image--an awareness that in order for thought to complete itself, it must bridge the gap between the spindly dendritic fibers of one neuron to another. Ammons draws from what neuroscience tells us about how thought must travel across space in order to fully capture the tragedy of when the gap cannot be bridged.

Of course, the Ammons is subtle--he does not ever use scientific terms such as "axon," "myelin sheath," "neurotransmitter," in the poem itself, but rather takes microscopic image and abstracts it upwards and outwards in order to capture the gap that yawns between the couple portrayed, as if they were two neurons that can no longer touch. Indeed, the "parting" occurs on microscopic level as well as on the level of human relations. Afterwards, follow this link to more SEM images and try writing your own poem in which the structures revealed by those images inform how you write about an event of human scale.

 

Parting

She was already lean when
a stroke or two slapped
her face like drawn
claw prints: akilter, she
ate less and

sat too much on the edge
of beds looking a width too
wide out of windows:
she lessened: getting
out for a good day, she sat

on the bench still and
thin as a porch post:
the children are all
off, she would think, but a
moment later,

startle, where are the children,
as if school had let
out: her husband watched
her till loosened away himself
for care: then,

seeming to know but never
quite sure, she was put in
a slightly less hopeful
setting: she watched her
husband tremble in to call

and shoot up high head-bent
eyes: her mind
flashed clear through, she was
sure of it, she had seen
that one before: her husband

longed to say goodbye or else
hello, but the room stiffened
as if two lovers had just caught
on sight, every move rigid
misfire in that perilous fire.