ITHACA, N.Y. -- A.R. Ammons, Cornell University's legendary bard, is celebrated in an unprecedented 480-page issue of Epoch magazine, Cornell's literary journal. The volume titled This Is Just a Place: The Life and Work of A.R. Ammons (Cornell University, $12.95) includes 30 previously unpublished poems, prose pieces from all phases of the poet's career, entries from Ammons' Navy diary, 21 remarkable paintings by the poet, plus letters, conversations and other ephemera.

Ammons, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Poetry at Cornell, died in February 2001 at age 75. During his career, he won virtually every major prize for poetry in the United States, including two National Book Awards -- one in 1973 for Collected Poems, 1951-1971 and another in 1993 for Garbage .

With an introduction by Roger Gilbert, Cornell professor of English and recipient of a Guggenheim for his upcoming critical work on Ammons, the book-length volume is the longest issue in the 57-year history of Epoch . All of the prose pieces and new poems were culled from the Ammons archive in Cornell Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.

The book is divided into five sections: New Poems, Early Writings, Painting and Music, Exchanges, and Reminiscences. The paintings appear courtesy of Emily Wilson, a close friend of Ammons. According to Gilbert, Ammons produced hundred of paintings in the 1970s and 1980s.

The 30 new poems are accompanied by short comments from distinguished friends, colleagues and admirers of Ammons, as well as members of his family. One such friend is Harold Bloom, noted literary critic and Yale professor, who writes: "I go on mourning for Archie Randolph Ammons, and I keep re-reading his poems."

The Ammons volume can be purchased by sending $12.95 (first class postage paid) to: Epoch , 251 Goldwin Smith Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. 14853.