A. R. Ammons

Archibald Randolph (A.R.) Ammons was born in rural North Carolina on February 18, 1926. His experiences growing up on a cotton and tobacco farm during the Great Depression inspired a great deal of his poetry. Ammons wrote his first poems while serving aboard a Navy destroyer during World War II. Ammons’s many honors include two National Books Awards, a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Library of Congress’s Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, and the Bollingen Prize for Poetry. He is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Bosh and Flapdoodle (2005), Glare (1997), Garbage (1993), A Coast of Trees (1981), Sphere (1974), Collected Poems 1951-1971, Tape for the Turn of the Year (1965), and Ommateum: With Doxology (1955). Ammons died on February 25, 2001, at the age of 75. (Source)