This Small Door #4

On 'Finishing Up' by A.R. Ammons

Finishing Up
A.R. Ammons
 
I wonder if I know enough to know what it’s really like
to have been here: have I seen sights enough to give
seeing over: the clouds, I’ve waited with white
October clouds like these this afternoon often before and
 
taken them in, but white clouds shade other white
ones gray, had I noticed that: and though I’ve
followed the leaves of many falls, have I spent time with
the wire vines left when frost’s red dyes strip the leaves
 
away: is more missing than was never enough: I’m sure
many of love’s kinds absolve and heal, but were they passing
rapids or welling stirs: I suppose I haven’t done and seen
enough yet to go, and, anyway, it may be way on on the way
 
before one picks up the track of the sufficient, the
world-round reach, spirit deep, easing and all, not just mind
answering itself but mind and things apprehended at once
as one, all giving all way, not a scrap of question holding back.

Kunjana:

I love a lot of poems by A.R. Ammons, especially his poem ‘Corson’s Inlet’. I think it’s one of the best long poems I have ever read. But for today’s discussion, I decided to go with ‘Finishing Up’.

I love that we start the first line in wonder, in the possibility of not having known enough what it’s like to have been here. I don’t know when Ammons wrote this poem but given the title, it feels like a poem one would’ve written in their old age or at the end of a book or something? And if this is true, isn’t it fascinating that even when one is old, or book-old, one wonders this, questions if they know enough about living, truly living?

I absolutely love the second line, ‘have I seen sights enough to give / seeing over’ – I love the syntax here – and also, just what a line. Interesting how ‘sight’ and ‘seeing’ and ‘seen’ are used thrice, differently. I love the idea of giving seeing over – that’s such a nice way to say, well, death – like am I ready to give it up, all this seeing? Have I done a good enough job of it? I love the punctuation Ammons uses, the colon, it adds a pause but also keeps things going deeper, it’s like one thing within another within another.

After seeing, he talks about seeing clouds, and how the white ones shade the others gray, and has he ‘noticed’ that – I love this. There is such a desire to see things, to live & experience things, to know things, to pay attention to things – and has one done this thoroughly? Almost like a sin not to. I love that he uses the example of clouds, something natural and available abundantly and yet he wants to be sure he’s seen each one of them. It’s like he cares about every single cloud. He is hungry for each of them. It’s also humbling that he (speaker-poet / poet-speaker) thinks this way because Ammons was so good at observing nature and writing about the natural world in general and even he seems unsure if he’s observed enough. Same with the leaves, or more precisely the wire vines – ‘have I spent time…’. ‘is more missing than was never enough’, the arrangement of words or the grammar of this line puzzled me a bit. What do you guys think about this line?

Then, he differentiates between the kinds of love. It’s like he wants to know every-thing intimately, and wants to know enough to be able to differentiate between things. Some people think that differentiating between things too much is like being fussy or creating several categories, several divisions. But here it looks like the speaker wants to know the difference more out of respect for each being’s essence, than out of a desire to categorize. And I think this is such an act of care. To want to be exact not out of the desire to be correct, but the desire to know better, learn better, care better.

Then, after a bunch of ‘wondering’, he comes to a statement – that he supposes he hasn’t done or seen enough yet to feel ready enough to leave this world. I love the final line of stanza three – ‘and anyway, it may be way on on the way’ – I love these repetitions throughout the poem and how they vary in meaning.

And it’s interesting that stanza four doesn’t have any colons, only commas, it’s like the pace has accelerated because it’s all one chunk of thought. That second line of stanza 4 is interesting – I don’t know what ‘world-round reach’ indicates, but I can vaguely guess what ‘spirit deep, easing and all,’ could suggest. But I love what comes after ‘easing and all’ - ‘not just mind answering itself but mind and things apprehended at once, as one, all giving all way, not a scrap of question holding back’ – I am not sure what this means exactly but I somehow understand it? There’s some degree of the unsayable in it, the ungraspable, something of the subtle or the ‘sookshma’ as we say in Hindi, just in a more spiritual sense.

Let me try putting my understanding of this line into words: so, not just the mind answering itself but mind and things apprehended at once, as one – okay, so, I read this as not just the supremacy or singleness of the mind, of a thought-heavy kind of living, not just living in your head or understanding/perceiving things through your intellect alone but something else – the union of mind and things all at once, as one – almost like the marriage of the abstract (mind) and the physical (things), finally understanding them as one, having no division.

‘all giving all way, not a scrap of question holding back’ – the allness of things? I don’t know? Like making way for giving all of it away, similar to how he said ‘enough to give / seeing over’? Or all is giving way to all? ‘not a scrap of question holding back’ – so previous three stanzas were all about questioning and wondering aloud – and I feel like once the speaker apprehends this Thing, this unity of stuff, or starts to see things from this perspective of unity, there will be no questions holding him back here on the earth?

Anyway, great poem. Overall, I love how Ammons’s mind works in this winding way (as does his syntax) & how we read/see his mind in motion on the page. I don’t get the poem fully but also kind of feel I do, in some ways? Lol. That was too long, my apologies haha.

Kinjal:

I really liked the poem for its structure and the way it underplays the intent behind it. Kunjana, I enjoyed your reading of it, and don’t have much to add. I am not going to repeat how much I liked the syntax and enjambments in this poem. Like ‘enough to give/ seeing over’ and the way the line stops at ‘give’ and then continues with ‘seeing’ in the next line.

I like the playful aspect of comparing clouds, their shades, and then the expansive feeling of wanting to see each cloud. I like the large space this poem opens with ‘leaves of many falls’. I like the way these lines show how the poet is not only pausing the afternoon to see the clouds, but also how he is conscious of the passage of time.

About the line ‘more missing than was never enough’, I felt it transforms the discontent of ‘not enough’ to contentment by acknowledging that a lot more is missing anyways. So, however much you see there will always be more.

I also liked the aspect of ‘darshan’ in the act of seeing in this poem. And this spiritual aspect of seeing seems to come to fruition in the fourth stanza with ‘not just mind/ answering itself.’ And then the way it ends with the sense of oneness. As if seeing is okay, but ultimately the recognition with ‘at once/ as one, all giving all way’. As if seeing something properly is like seeing that it is not separate from self. At least that is how I read this poem as spiritual and all encompassing.

Yashasvi:

Hello hello friends,

I have arrived, even if a week late, haha! Much too much was going on for me to access and make sense of poetry, especially of this kind. Thanks for both of your readings I really did enjoy the in depth nature of them. I haven’t read too much of A. R. Ammons and I think I will read more of his work to get a sense of his style.

In this first encounter, it is as if this poem is a bird perched on a tree and I am looking at it with my binoculars, the thing that stands out most to me is the syntax. It creates a sense of internal logic in the poem. There is a looping way in which sentences have been constructed. Each line is doing a lot of work. For example, if we just looked at ‘away: is more missing than was never enough: I’m sure’ that line in itself holds so much longing, distance, lack and being sure. I also read it again and this poem is one sentence, if I am not wrong. There is just one full stop at the very end. How on earth do you sustain that, haha! I usually fully do away with punctuation as a cop out, haha.

But back to syntax and little earlier in the poem to the line you pointed it out as well, I love that line, it is so musical, ‘to have been here: have I seen sights enough to give

seeing over:’ just all the ‘s’ sounds there are beautiful. But also give seeing over is not a phrase we hear often or construct often. It is a deliberate, conscious way to allude to death, as giving the senses over. It is interesting how much of an impact it has. Because it is not a diminishing of that sense in a way, not a death of it, but a far more gentle giving it over. It is also quite a gentle way of looking at death. As if this body is indeed temporary and the speaker is now going to give all the borrowed senses over and is wondering if he has had his fill.

I also loved the syntax of ‘ it may be way on the way’. There is contextual beauty, yes, but just as a phrase, it is beautiful. The repetition of way, the may that also contributes to the sound creates a lovely effect.

It is also heartening to read a poem that is so gently about, do I feel like I have done enough. It didn’t spur me into a sense of guilt, but did make me want to look at the leaves and flowers and every passing cloud, a little more carefully.

We are living in an absolute dumpster fire, what with the news and all that, I feel the gentleness, the delicate specificity of this poem is like an antidote to all that news and all that anxiety we are dealing with.