A.R. Ammons

A.R. Ammons was born in 1926 on a small farm near New Hope. He graduated from Whiteville High School and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. On the G.I. Bill, he graduated from Wake Forest College in 1948 and became a school teacher for a short time. After graduate school in California, he worked for his wife’s family’s glass company in southern New Jersey, and started publishing poetry. Gaining critical acclaim, he was offered a position teaching at Cornell University. Over the years he published 27 collections of poems, and won every national award available to poets. He has been called the greatest American poet of the 20^th Century. Mr. Ammons died in 2001.