Feeling As a Foreign Language

A.R. Ammons describes garbage in his poem Garbage, as a sacred image of our time. He implements borderline sacrilegious descriptions of a monumental landfill alongside I-95 in Florida.  While describing the aesthetic and action surrounding the garbage, he is able to sustain multiplicity in his diction and surrounding topics. His chose of language in describing the landfill revamp the language of what he is illustrating, explaining it in a new light and exploring vocabulary oddities.  A parallel I found compelling are the religious undertones he designated to the landfill. Ammons first alludes to ziggurats on section two page 18:

“the garbage trucks crawl as if in obeisance,

as if up ziggurats toward the high places gulls

and garbage keep alive, offering to gods

of garbage, of retribution, of realistic

expectation, the deities of the unpleasant

necessities: refined, young earthworms,

drowned up in the macadam pools by spring rain, moisten

out white in a day or so and, round spots”

The automated machine is crawling up the mount of putrid and neglect to pay homage to the “gods of garbage.” Ziggurats were massive structures built in the ancient Mesopotamian valley; it forms a terraced step pyramid of receding stories and levels. The comparison seems fairly loose considering the utter chaos landfills inevitability tend to be. I am having difficulty unwrapping this passage because there can be so many interpretations. Possibly that we are not sacrificing enough to God?

There are many other allusions to religion imbedded in the poem, another instance that Ammons suggests religious creed is on page 27 (pyramid), and page 30 (priestly plume rises above the junk).