When A. R. Ammons goes wrong, I think the problem is primarily one of voice. At his best, he is an objective poet who speculates on the nature of reality and its possible underpinnings. There is an observer present in such poems, to be sure, but his explicit role is a small one. Ammons is at his best when he most follows Emerson's inspired standard: "I become a transparent eyeball." In such cases, little or no attention is drawn to the speaker-observer. In The Snow Poems, however, all attention is consciously directed at the speaking character himself, and this fact accounts, I think, for the book's monumental failure. Good confessional poetry achieves its success by drawing on the tensions, neuroses, and self-destructive impulses of the poet's own life. Judging from The Snow Poems, Ammons lives an altogether too sane and ordinary life for him to operate successfully in...