Essay Questions

Why does the author mentions a center as the starting point for his literary talent in the poem entitled "Poetics’’?

In many cultures, there is no deity, just a central point from which everything in the world originated. Many believed that the center was the original place from which ideas generated from and then as we get further and further away from the center, what we see are second-hand reproductions of those ideas. By mentioning the central point and the spiraling that takes originates from the center, the author wants to suggest that there is a central point in his creative process and that from that point everything is inferior to the idea that is represented by the center.

What is the main idea transmitted by the poem entitled "Poetics’’?

A.R. Ammons wrote many poems on what it makes a poem a good piece of literature. In the poem entitled
"Poetics’’ he analyzes once more the creative process and tries to find what makes a piece of literature valuable and what makes it worth being considered a masterpiece. The author suggests that it is not important the way a piece of literature was written and rather what is important is the message it transmits to the readers. This idea that the meaning is more important than the form is the main theme in the poem.

What is Corsons Inlet?

The name Corsons Inlet is the title of one of the poems written by A.R. Ammons. The proper name is Corson Inlet and it refers to a waterway on the coast of New Jersey. The reason why the author chose to describe that place in particular is because he lived near Corson Inlet for a period in his life and thus he wrote from his own experience and described what he could observe as a person living in the area.