Tape for the Turn of the Year

A. R. Ammons composed the long, thin poem on a roll of adding-machine tape and then copied it, foot by foot, into manuscript. Shaped as a journal, it runs from December 6, 1963, to January 10, 1964. Ammons meant the method as a serious experiment: the poem had to adapt to a constraint outside itself, with the tape setting the length of each line and the roll deciding when the poem would end. Its mood moves between witty, serious, lyrical and meditative. Norton published it in 1965.

Austin Kleon read it alongside its calendar, starting on December 6 and following each entry through January 10, as he described in his roundup of his 2018 reading.