The strident hackers miss no chance to dramatize, hurt, fairly or unfairly, for they fear their emptiness

From A. R. Ammons “Garbage”

the hackers, having none

hack away at intensity: they want to move,

disturb, shock: they show the idleness of

pretended feeling: feeling moves by moving

into considerations of moving away: real

feeling assigns its weight gently to others,

helps them meet, deal with the harsh, brutal,

the ineluctable, eases the burdens of unclouded

facts: the strident hackers miss no chance to

dramatize, hurt, fairly or unfairly, for they

fear their emptiness: the gentlest, the most

refined language, so little engaged it is hardly

engaging, deserves to tell the deepest wishes,

roundabout fears: loud boys, the

declaimers, the deaf listen to them: to the whisperers,

even the silent, their moody abundance: the

poem that goes dumb holds tears: the line,

the fire line, where passion and control waver

for the field, that is a line so diffcult to

keep in the right degree, one side not raiding the other:

(G, 120—121)