National Book Awards Acceptance Speeches
A.R. Ammons, Winner of the 1973
National Book Award in Poetry for
COLLECTED POEMS, 1951-1971
I’m very grateful that there is this thing called poetry which those dislocated into some extreme can attempt to engage and, by engaging, realize a center to their worlds and, better still, understand that their worlds relate to the world we all make and share.
Poetry is a very great medium, apparently
capable of as many possibilities as the individual
psyche can invent or manage; indeed, it seems to be
rich enough in potentiality to match the potentiality
of the world itself, allowing maximum range to the
imagination acting under the disciplines of its own
realization.
Every poet who assumes this medium and stabilizes
a world for us improves our ability to survive and
function here.
I’m glad to have this chance to thank you for the general esteem you grant to poets who undertake these fairly desperate ventures, show what is wrong, give us the imaginative energy to change or endure what is wrong.
We have many thousands of young poets in this country today. I hope their number is not indicative of how much trouble we’re in as a society. In any case, they are part of our cure, and we owe them as much challenge and as much recognition as we can give them.
I want to thank the booksellers, the publishers, and the judges who have honored me in this way. Thank you.