by John Ashbery
So...not a fan. I wonder if I had Ashbery confused with someone else (as happens with me) when I bought this whenever I did. It's strange: you don't know where the poems are going to go, which is typically desirable. But it's like being taken round by a tour guide, and you may not know where you're ...
One of the most important individual volumes of poetry ever published. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Even if you end up deciding you hate Ashbery (and many do), everyone who cares about poetry at all owes it to themsel...
These certainly are obscure poems, for the most part. Not that the syntax is difficult; but rather the statements, the metaphors and choice of phrases, are so opaquely self-willed. My reaction is mostly to wish for footnotes, then shrug. One exception among those I've read so far is the long title p...
Log in with Facebook 
