"Yes, but ..." contains poems that explore how each of us negotiates our place in the world, through an interactive mixture of facts, suppositions, and sources of deeper truths. It asks, how do we know what we know? One reviewer notes the point of "Yes, but ..." is not just knowing, and not just insight. The point is the dance. The interplay. The dynamics between fact and meaning, with wordplay and a little humor tossed in for good measure.
"Yes, but ..." contains poems that explore how each of us negotiates our place in the world, through an interactive mixture of facts, suppositions, and sources of deeper truths. It asks, how do we know what we know? One reviewer notes the point of "Yes, but ..." is not just knowing, and not just insight. The point is the dance. The interplay. The dynamics between fact and meaning, with wordplay and a little humor tossed in for good measure.
When trudging the slow, long-haul path of becoming a poet, a writer
inevitably finds themselves asking:
"where do poems come from: you may
want to know: have you ever wondered
…
wonder which comes first, the motion
of feeling, or the event, the perception,
connection: oceanward, you could
say that a rift of motion starts in
the doldrums, forms a progression…" [1]
All developing poets need to inspect this question, as did poet Archie
Ammons, who put his voice to the matter in Glare. The question needs to
be addressed in pieces because poems come in a multitude of ways—in
short, intense bursts, like gamma rays from a neutron star, or more gently,
like the slow uncoiling of memories and longings; they come in lines,
words, pastiches, or quilt-squares; like water over rocks, or dew on grass,
or like an unhurried in-depth inspection of a rose’s green-thorned stem.
It’s all different. It’s always different. But if a poet considers the way a
poem or group of poems emerges, she or he sometimes can begin to tap
the creative source: they then can prompt it, encourage it, and stand back,
giving the inkling room to grow. That poking, inspecting, and studying—
that is the process I used in creating this book.
I have long enjoyed Ammons’ rollicking language, the sudden dips
and sways, his careful but devil-may-care attitude, the way he bounced his
thoughts from stanza to stanza, in constant motion. In fact, several years
ago I paid tribute to his poetic skills in a chapbook, Uncoils a Snake [2],
but here, I’m in a different mode. Yes, I still greatly appreciate and admire
his work, but I’m trying to get through it; get over it; and move on. I am
trying to grasp the essence of the world from my vantage and our places in
it through more independent eyes.
I developed the long central poem in this collection, titled “Yes, but…”
using Archie Ammons’ book Glare to provide a sequence of writing
prompts. The core of “Yes, but…” centers on negotiation—a thing we
do constantly, a thing we must do, minute by minute as a way to fit into
the world. It is about how we reconcile one thought with another, with
attention given to how things fit. It is about how one person responds to
another person’s point of view, as they both continue to adhere to their
own point of view and their own set of facts. ‘’Yes, that is true, but…”
We do it second by second, all the time, with others and with our-
selves. At least, I think this is true, but…
To satisfy my innate fondness for both chaos and order, in this longish
poem I started with Glare, page 3. There, I skimmed words and phrases
that caught my fancy—“boulder from the blue,” “wandering stone,” things
like that. And then I wrote from my heart, lines that were triggered by
the prompting words. Next, to address my insatiable need for ordered
disorder, I skip-hopped forward, selected a new page, and again wrote to
prompting words and ideas found there. By repeating this process multiple
times, I ended up working through the entire text of Glare, pausing
sometimes to contemplate and create, in an effort to capture my overall
sense of Glare.
Now, that’s it. I think I’m done with Archie. Peace be with you, good
Buddy.
But then briefly back again, to more accurately explain this collection:
in addition to the poem “Yes, but…,” this collection includes a series of
short poems that frame my little window to the world. Through these
shorter works, my intent was to begin breaking down the structuring
aspects of science that have organized my life, and to begin devoting
myself instead to a more science-free view of the world. My aim here is
to explore things bounded more by a simple holistic sense of beauty and
emotional completeness, and infused with a little humor. The world, after
all, is a funny place. So I offer several shorter poems leading to the core
poem, “Yes, but…” — and then follow “Yes, but…” with another series
of shorter poems, which open onto my new post-Ammons path. In this
preface, you can see that I’ve inverted concepts, as often I do, to create a
personally satisfying end to my singular attraction to Ammons’ works,
and then to set out on a new journey.
1. Ammons, A.R. 1998. Glare. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY. 294 p.
2. Stewart, A.J. 2021. Uncoils a Snake. Periploi Press. Nashville, TN. 46 p.
In Yes, but author Arthur Stewart has inspected and prodded the many ways poems are thought of, and has brought to life a collection of 33 poems that explore the "Yes, but" moments — where certainty and hesitation coexist — in a unique style that captures the texture of thinking, experience, and memory. The work is contemplative and moves fluidly between the personal and the universal.
The core of the collection is the long poem Yes, but which uses poet Archie Ammons' 1997 poem Glare as a muse and springboard, using phrases from the text as prompts to create a sprawling, stream-of-consciousness style meditation on purpose, resilience, and the human condition.
The writing style resists easy categorization. With a pastiche-like approach, the author channels multiple literary traditions—Modernism, Beat poetics, and literary realism. The language is both deliberate and improvisational, lending the collection a raw sincerity. The minimalist style allows each word to carry weight.
Enjambment is a recurring device throughout the collection, mirroring the fragmented nature of thought and the themes of uncertainty that pervade this collection.
Many of the poems are self-aware, like Working from a Writing Prompt, which reflects on the nature of both writing and living, making it an intimate and relatable read. The author grapples with universal anxieties of purpose, individuality, and mortality and quietly embraces the impermanence of the self.
In Six Voices, the author converses with other literary figures, their words serving as stepping stones to explore personal themes of mortality, hope, and artistic creation.
The collection showcases the author's range and interest in observing beauty and fragility in the quotidian. The author moves deftly from gardening anecdotes to the physics of light on water, from tactile, grounded descriptions of tools to delightful nature imagery of turtles peeping out of ponds, always with an introspective undercurrent.
This collection is more than a series of poems—it serves as a guide to writing, reading, and living. It invites readers to pause, reflect, and embrace the complexities of existence. Yes But will resonate with readers who enjoy poetry that blends intellectual inquiry with a raw, dynamic voice.