Archie Randolph Ammons is a Southerner, born on his family's farm near Whiteville, North Carolina. His Protestant, rural childhood has apparently contributed both to his unwillingness to settle for easy resolutions and to his appreciation for small details of nature. Having worked in a shipyard after high school, from 1944 to 1946 Ammons served in the U.S. Naval Reserve in the South Pacific, where he began writing poetry. After the war, he attended Wake Forest College on the GI Bill and received a B.S. in 1949, the same year in which he married Phyllis Plumbo. He was principal of a small elementary school on Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, until 1951 when he started graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1952 Ammons began some ten years as vice-president of a glass-manufacturing firm in Millville, New Jersey. He served as poetry editor for Nation in 1963 and in 1964 began teaching at...