Images provided with permission of John Ammons.
Archibald Randolph (A.R.) Ammons was born in rural North Carolina on February 18, 1926. His experiences growing up on a cotton and tobacco farm during the Great Depression inspired a great deal of his poetry. Ammons wrote his first poems while serving aboard a Navy destroyer during World War II. After the war, he earned a BA from Wake Forest University and an MA in English from the University of California…