What the Critics Say
About Steven P Schneider
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AR AMMONS AND THE POETICS OF WIDENING SCOPE
PRAIRIE AIR SHOW
AR Ammons and the Poetics of
Widening Scope
Copyright © 1994
by Steven P. Schneider
Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1994
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Steven P Schneider's careful examination of AR
Ammons's poetry surveys the whole range of the
great poet's work, which now spans four decades.
Ammons, more than any other poet, exploits the
way of science for an acutely lucid view of life.
Schneider, more than any other critic, has what it
takes — in biology, astronomy, optometry, quantum
physics, and archeology — to make valuable
comments on many of Ammons's most important
writings. Readers ought to feel grateful. I know I
do. — William Harmon
AR Ammons and the Poetics of Widening Scope
marks a significant advance in the understanding
not only of Ammons's canon but the entire tradition
of visionary poetics. In associating the theory of
optics he finds at work in Ammons's project with
the enlightenment premises of literary
transcendentalism. Steven Schneider has
transformed our habitual angle of vision. — Donald E Pease
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Prairie Air Show
Copyright © 2000
by Steven P Schneider
Hurakan P, 2000
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Several of the poems particularly stand out. "Comings and Goings, Early July" is a
two-stepped free verse piece with a persistent, quiet lyricism. "Garden Buddha" balances its
unrhymed
tercets with occasional interior rhyme, end-rhyming only in the couplet it concludes with:
"when the gold fireflies of evening are lit/the Buddha is unflinching, content to sit."
The collection's title poem has a masterful ring to it, and I think these
two-stepped poems and the three in loose blank verse/free verse, show Schneider at his
best. — Roy Scheele, Nebraska Territory
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