Add another jewel to the literary crown of acclaimed poet A.R. Ammons, Cornell University's Goldwin Smith Professor Emeritus of Poetry, who has been selected to receive the 1998 Tanning Prize, a $100,000 award for "outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry."

It's also the story of a poet who won a prize and didn't know it. The announcement, made by the Academy of American Poets, was a complete surprise to the recently retired Cornell professor of poetry.

"It was a very surprising prize," said Ammons. "I had heard of the award before and its peculiar name caught my attention, but this was news to me."

The Tanning Prize was established in 1994 by a gift of $2 million from the painter Dorothea Tanning to the Academy of American Poets. Previous recipients of the Tanning Prize include: W.S. Merwin, 1994; James Tate, 1995; Adrienne Rich, 1996; and Anthony Hecht, 1997.

No applications are accepted for the $100,000 prize.

Recipients are selected by a panel of judges appointed each year by the Academy of American Poets, and the winner is announced in the fall.

This year's judges were Edward Hirsch, Richard Howard, Stephen Sandy, Susan Stewart and Helen Vendler.

While the award was based in large part on Ammons' latest book of poems, titled Glare, (Norton, 1997), it also recognizes his lifetime contribution to American poetry.

"His latest book has a riveting, iconoclastic freshness, so that in awarding Ammons the Tanning Prize, we are able to honor a lifetime achievement and at the same time celebrate a great poet's most recent gift to culture," said poet Susan Stewart, one of five judges on the Tanning panel that chose the Cornell professor emeritus.

Ammons, who was honored by the university with an "Ammonsfest" in April of this year, has won two National Books Awards -- in 1973 for Collected Poems and in 1993, for Garbage.

He also has won virtually every major prize for poetry in the United States, including: the Frost Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Poetry over a Lifetime, given by the Poetry Society of America; the Bolligen Prize from Yale University; the National Book Critics Circle Award of Poetry; the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize; as well as a Lannan Foundation Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur "genius award" Fellowship.

Despite these achievements, Ammons' memory of his early years as a struggling poet has not been diminished.

"I greatly appreciate the recognition. It rings back to the earliest days when there was no recognition or support -- and it means a lot to hear those bells."

Ammons was born in 1926 near Whiteville, N.C. He and his wife live in Ithaca, N.Y.