“[T]he apple an apple”: Ammons, Bloom, and “the ten thousand things”—with Emerson and Lao Tzu

A. R. Ammons’s poem, “The Arc Inside and Out,” is a rendering of the first chapter of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. It is also a contribution to the dialogue between the poet and his friend, Harold Bloom. Specifically, the poem is a rejoinder to Bloom’s “Emerson lecture,” and a part of Ammons’s developing case, made in letters and poems together, against Bloom’s agonistic view of poetry, and indeed of life, in favor of his own highly refined, if reticent Daoism.