"Where Here Is the Image for Longing": A.R. Ammons and Writing as Technology

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2011
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Haverford College. Department of English
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Award
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
Previous critics of A.R. Ammons' work have located the poet in a “direct” line of descent from “the great originals of the American Romantic tradition, Emerson and Whitman.” I argue that, while I broadly agree with this characterization of Ammons' intellectual influences, Ammons' poetic mission or interest is more complex than such clear hereditary lineations would imply. My focus is on Ammons' awareness on the written word as an “extension of man”—that is, of word as technology. Relying on theories advanced by McLuhan and Walter Ong regarding the relationship between “interiorized literacy” and consciousness, I explore how this theme of “writing as technology” informs and explicates the characteristic strains of loneliness and "antianthropocentrism" that run through Ammons' work.
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