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.