Shit? Really...

Amber Faith- Blog 3

Growing up in a small town can be a blessing and a cursing. Especially when it is one of “those” small towns where everyone seems to know everything. Everyone is supposed to have the same views and thinking process as the surrounding culture. When you choose to vary from the “typical” you are extremely radical, and not always viewed as radical being a positive behavior. The culture is known to be very conservative and religious based. In these cultures, only in the right crowd is it allowable to use taboo words. A major taboo word like ‘shit’ seems irrelevant to a piece of poetic literature. This culture would be a prime example of who would probably not appreciate the works of A.R. Ammons. When we break through our cultural constraints we have the ability to form our own judgments, even down to the topic of literature. Through reading the poem by A.R. Ammons I began to use a completely different application to the word shit. Ammons creatively used a common biological process of life to demonstrate many varied forms to humor the readers with the taboo word shit. This author’s unusual word choice reveals that this poem is only intended for mature audiences with an intellectual insight to translate the humorous parenthetical and how they vary based on different animals. He used our general assumptions and thoughts of these very diverse animals to relate them altogether with the one thing that will certainly have in common, shitting. Ammons’ boldness to compose a witty and entertaining poem about shit shows he assumes the reader will be able to be open minded culturally in order to laugh at his atypical humor about shit. More than likely, he also intends his audience will have some understanding and appreciation for biology with the numerous and comical references he makes toward this subject specifically. A biological reference in the poem such as “caterpillar shit (so many dark kinds, neatly pelleted as mint seed.)” implies knowledge of the defecating process of a caterpillar. Even without biological knowledge lines such as “…bull shit (the classic)…” could also be found amusing. When I initially read this poem I thought that it was too absurd to find humor within the text. Finally, I allowed myself to be more open-minded and press beyond focusing on the taboo word, shit. Once I directed my focus more to analyzing the text and meanings behind the text I found it an insightfully different form of literature that made a typically disgusting word into the most hilarious word ever written in poetic form. A.R. Ammons is not so full of shit after all.