Annal:1981 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry
From AwardAnnals
Results of the National Book Critics Circle Award in the year 1981. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
A Coast of Trees: Poems
- 1981 NBCC–Poetry winner
- Score: 10.31
Of this volume, the noted critic Harold Bloom has written, “A Coast of Trees represents A. R. Ammons at his strongest and most eloquent in the lyric mode. The book is an achievement fully comparable to his Uplands and Briefings. Among the poems likely to assume a permanent place in the Ammonsian (and American) canon are the majestic title lyric and ‘Swells,’ ‘Easter Morning,’ ‘Keepsake,’ ‘Givings,’ and ‘Persistences.’ Again Ammons has confirmed his vital continuities with the central Whitmanian tradition of our poetry, and his crucial place in that panoply.”
