Ammons, A. R., 1926-2001

Poet and university professor Archie Randolph Ammons was born near Whiteville, N.C., in 1926. He earned a reputation as one of the nation's leading poets in the decades after he joined the Cornell University faculty in 1963, becoming Goldwin Smith Professor of Poetry a decade later. Recipient of the Bollingen Prize and the National Book Award and Critics Circle Award for poetry, Ammons was one of the first recipients of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 1981.

North Carolina poet A.R. Ammons joined the English faculty of Cornell University in 1961.

A. R. Ammons was born in Whiteville, North Carolina, in 1926. He served as a sonar operator aboard the U.S.S. Gunason during World War II, traveling widely through the South Pacific. Returning to North Carolina, Ammons attended Wake Forest University, from which he received a B.S. degree in 1949. After a year as principal of Hatteras (North Carolina) Elementary School, Ammons and his wife Phyllis headed west, where Ammons did graduate work in English at the University of California at Berkeley until 1952.

Starting in 1952 and continuing into the early 1960s, Ammons worked for Freidrich & Dimmock, Inc., a New Jersey laboratory glassware manufacturing company. During this time, his poetry gained increasing acceptance. He left his manufacturing career in 1961 for a position on the English faculty at Cornell University. In 1971, he became a full professor, and, in 1973, Goldwin Smith professor of poetry.

Ammons has received many awards, among them the National Book Award for Poetry (1973), the Bollingen Prize in Poetry (1974), and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry (1981). Besides frequent publication in literary journals, Ammons has published many books, received numerous honorary degrees, and been the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Award.