In the form of a journal covering the period December 6, 1963, through January 10, 1964, A. R. Ammonss long, thin poem was written on a roll of adding-machine tape, then transferred foot by foot to manuscript. He chose this method as a serious experiment in making a poem adapt to something outside itself. The tape determined both the length of the poems lines and when it ends.This is the most surprising formal invention of a major innovator, is the fullest vision Ammons gives us of his enormous creative enterprise. Among the major descendents of Whitmans