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_____p o e t r y special WEST WIND BY MARY OLIVER HOUGHTON MIFFLIN 96 PAGES GLARE BY A.R. AMMONS NORTON 224 PAGES BY ALBERT MOBILIO west wind A quick survey of the first lines of the first few poems in Mary Oliver's "West Wind" makes clear that the poet is an animal lover: "Seven white butterflies/delicate in a hurry," "owl/make your little appearance now," "This morning/the dogs/were romping and stomping," "This morning/two birds/fell down the side of the maple tree," "A band of wild turkeys is coming down the hill" or "The meadowlark, with his yellow breast and a sort of limping flight." These shopworn scenes of the peaceable kingdom inaugurate poems unable to veer off the flower-petal strewn path their openings predicate; their mild-mannered rusticity is disturbed just slightly by ominous undertones of "mossy shadows." We learn that the owl looks down and sees how "everything/trembles/then settles/from mere incidence into/the lush of meaning." Now that's one wise owl. If only I could believe Oliver's "lush of meaning" is a drunken hunter intent on gunning down the owl, but alas, I know different. Prize winner -- the Pulitzer and National Book Award -- that she is, Oliver is among the ranks of much feted versifiers whose precious, so very "poetic" work appears wholly untouched by a century's worth of cartoons, flame throwers, be-bop drummers and a few dozen revolutions of sensibility. Instead, she offers trite coffee-cup insights: "I don't want to sell my life for money,/I don't even want to come in out of the rain." Or how about: "a black ant traveling/briskly modestly/from day to day from one/golden page to another." Ah, the modest ant. He too, it seems, drinks in the "lush of meaning." As you might need a drink yourself after handling, oh so delicately, Oliver's kitschy knickknacks. glare A. R. Ammons routinely puts the lie to Poe's famous judgment that the long poem is a contradiction in terms. His series of book-length poems -- "Tape for the Turn of the Year," "Sphere," "Garbage" and now "Glare" -- may have the novel-like ambition to speak from both the town square as well as the soul's dark night, yet he has relinquished none of poetry's expressive music and precision. If Ammons were a pop star, he would be one of the rare ones capable of carrying off a double disc. At nearly 300 pages, "Glare" is a high-energy, relentlessly self-aware collision with the whole of life. "I keep proving I'm not god's gift to/the world," Ammons wryly notes, "by trying to prove I am." Knotting commonplace thought into lacerating riddles is his stock-in-trade: if/I'm not to have a life, at least let me tell you about it, that is, that I'm not having it: that will make me nearly think I'm having it: imagine a life! of words: better than nothing, better, better, bitter-bile better: for what I meant was love: now, don't blubber: poor comfort, such poor comfort: twaddle: For Ammons, the myriad momentary revelations -- and they come fast and furious in this runaway poem, unimpeded by any punctuation other than the colon -- are always undercut by his knowing too much. Telling about his life will only "nearly" allow him to think he has one, and all the telling comes down to "twaddle" anyway. In "Glare," Ammons offers a mind on fire using the ego for kindling; it's a very long poem short on sentiment, yet hardly big enough to accommodate his blistering sentience. July 10, 1997 Albert Mobilio lives in New York. His book of poetry, "The Geographics," was published last year. BOOKMARK: http://www.salonmagazine.com/sneaks/sneak.html