Customer Reviews (1)

One never knows where they are (going) in an Ashbery poem.
_Three Poems_ is a journey of language itself; no destination of intention or meaning. One experiences a transparency--no mediation of form--of emotional states. These Ashbery poems are linguistic potential, potentially linguistic . . . nothing ever actualized by "saying". Ashbery circumambulates the thresholds of silence to collapse a medium shown to be inadequate to its content. It is this particular work that forced critical theories such as Deconstruction.These poems are not texts . . . the best "language poetry" since Stein's _Tender Buttons_. ... Read more

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"Reticent, shy, unfailingly modern, Ashbery is as unorthodox [as] any of the great twentieth-century creators: Breton, Stravinsky, Picasso," observed Jeremy Reed in Britain's Poetry Review. "We are privileged to be around at a time when he is writing." Flow Chart, a book-length poem that first appeared in 1991, might be Ashbery's greatest creation: a staggering and exuberant "torrent of invention [that] comes as close to an epic poem as our postmodern, nonlinear, deconstructed sensibilities will allow. . . . "
... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The Best "Interview" of Ashbery
When I first started to read Flow Chart, or even as the intimidating book was in the waiting room of "to read" books, I thought the epic was going to be striped with doldrums but also accompanied with the great Ashbery I have come to know in reading all the previous poetry of Flow Chart and his latest Chinese Whispers and Your Name Here. Well, the poem (divided in six digestable sections) was virtually void of rambling while being inclusive of most voices that Ashbery has mastered.
I have read Flow Chart only one time through, (although with a pink highlighter) and I would describe this poem with a knee-jerk reaction as something like a nervous host of a party that flits from one guest to another. Ashbery doesn't stay on one exact "subject" for long (even though Ashbery says he has no subject). This poem is very tangential. He will introduce in a semi-confessional mode some of his fears about writing and the creative processes and droughts that a poet will ultimately go through, but he will run off the track for an enjoyable detour about a favorable memory.
This book is to be enjoyed for its melancholic closeness that it allows us as readers and as a kind of handbook for writers. In handbook I mean that there are "writer" topics to be enjoyed: critics, past, sexuality, the end, precursors, disciples, and even shallow things like being recognized for achievements whether political or well-deserved.
The one negative about Flow Chart is that one should be a seasoned reader of poetry and more so John Ashbery to thoroughly enjoy it. Flow Chart is the closest thing we have in literature that allows a reader inside the mind of a great thinker and poet while shielding off melodrama and boredom. There is a loosenessin life's conversation that this book contains while keeping a thoughtful and philosophical centrality to it. Every large and small division has a subconscious apprehension or exuberance about life and more importantly art. On page 147 Ashbery says, "The same things happen over and over again under such different guises[.]" And in the closing lines Ashbery again reflects his thoughts of his recyclability of poetry by saying, "I still think I shall be the same person/ when I get up/ to leave, and then repeat the formulas that have come to us so many times/ in the past[.]"
I find this book much like a couch discussion or "free association." There are moments of released repression and healthy enlightenment juxtaposed with casual but interesting life "things."
Ashbery in Flow Chart uses all the leg room available to display his poetic powers. This is his finest achievement through 1992 ,and perhaps in the long poem format still his best to date.

funny
There is a great deal of humor in this work.Ashbery is a very droll writer.

Must-read Ashbery
Let's assume you're browsing this page because you have at least some familiarity with John Ashbery's poetry.Let's assume you're familiar with the classic short poems represented well in the Selected Poems (you should be), perhaps the long poems like "the Skaters" or "AWave" or "Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror (read them too).Oncethat reading is behind you, and especially if you've read the three longpieces in Three Poems, Flow Chart is a necessary next adventure.Before Iread Flow Chart, I think I carried a prejudice against long poems, andgiven Ashbery's tendency to difficulty, the prospect of reading Flow Chartwas exactly my idea of laborious reading.But once I began my fears andprejudices disappeared.Though I was already a fan of Ashbery, and hadread and reread most of his work, Flow Chart was soon tops on my list ofsatisfying reading experiences.And exactly that term,"experience", is what distinguishes this Book above mere books,separates this Poem from American poetry.This is a book one reads toexperience oneself reading, to participate, so to speak, as a reader insidewhat must be called a work of art.By my measure, this is Ashbery at hisvery finest, freest, most exuberant, and most melancholy.Don't let thelength dissuade you from reading this poem.Give yourself some time, allowyourself to take it in slowly, over the course of a week or two.You mightfind yourself, as I did, finishing a first reading and immediatelyscheduling the next weekend to enjoy it again in a single sitting. ... Read more

Product Description
239 pages ill. some color;Includes bibliographical references. Subject: Grooms, Red - Exhibitions. 1985 Oversized paperback copy. Ex Library with markings. Inside solid. Cover has some creasing and wear. ... Read more

Product Description
Early in the title work of Wakefulness, Ashbery writes: "Little by little the idea of the true way returned to me." Progressive awakenings occur in all of these poems. As we read, each of our senses is engaged, and we come to detect a search for spiritual revelations--in buildings, churches, homes, trains, and cars. Then suddenly we find ourselves back in the open, pursuing the course to Baltimore and Bucharest, to the zoo and the park, to the past and future. As ever, Ashbery's wakeful digressions are wily, comic, heartbreaking, and vertiginous.
Amazon.com Review
If John Ashbery pays any allegiance in these poems, it is to the syntax of dreams. Wakefulness captures the spirit of the sleeping mind, aplace where past, present, and future function simultaneously, and whereone might find, for instance, seraphs and parking lots, or jesters anddashboards, whimsically juxtaposed. As is often the case in dream worlds,the speaker embarks on a journey. Just where he is going remains elusive,but we do know that there is madness "in the next sleeping car" and "no release in sight." True to the unconscious mind, these poems followtheir own idiosyncratic logic, as in, "It was a misunderstanding,mudsliding / from the side where the thing was let in. / And it was allgoose, let me tell you, braided goose..." Ashbery deliberately roughens hisedges, as if he genuinely believes, as the speaker warns in "AddedPoignancy," that "millions of languages / became extinct, and not becausethere was nothing left to say in them, / but because it was all said toowell, with / nary a dewdrop on the moment of glottal expulsion."

Exceptional in their daring wordplay and rhyme, teeming with theunexpected, the eccentric, and the downright freakish, these poems capture ourattention by refusing to conform to narrative expectations. Here we enterthe mind of an exacting genius, a mind so taken with the subtleties oflanguage, with the way words are laid down, that when he states: "Each is trulya unique piece, / you said, or, perhaps, each / is a truly unique piece. Isniff the difference," we believe him. --Martha Silano ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Restrained beauty
This is a beautiful book and a number of poems in it are at the pinnacle of Ashbery's achievement.There is a musicality in some of these poems that is sometimes lacking in some of Ashbery's longer, more prose-like works. A number of these poems are breathtakingly beautiful. In parts there is a sad undertone of loss and mournfulness, which adds to the poems' detached beauty.

Ashbery at his Sharpest
If you have read "Chinese Whispers" and "Your Name Here," then "Wakefulness" is kind of the first part of that set. "Wakefulness" has its surprising slopes that only Ashbery can give us but there is also a distant cohesiveness to it that an Ashbery follower can pick up. I often try to think of a way to describe what an Ashbery poem is like as if I was explaining it to someone who might cringe at the difficulty Ashbery presents us. These poems are like a light sleep in front of the tv where commercials and sitcoms sprinkle an already watery dream: the real mixes with the dreamed real. None of these poems, and not many of Ashbery's poems, are barreling down on the reader in a straight line. Everything is smoke in a fan. Once one can step inside Ashbery's voice, then there is a comfortablity in the chaos, as there is inside our heads.

Amazing brilliances in the smallest things
Here you will find the body and mind of the post-modern world
unfolding before your eyes, with all its pleasures, its anxieties, its lost dreams, its hopes.It is the world we know, because it is already in us, part of us--it is always arriving, always arrived.But, there is more.Ashbery, through unique images and juxtapositions, brings into the open a world not quite satisfied with itself, sometimes too satisfied--in a state of suspended satisfaction, sometimes leading to nausea. It is a world looking for experiences under every log and at every corner, only to find the rates of exchange rising and the necessity for experiences increasing.It is a world placed smack dap in the impossibility of its own being.What we have in "Wakefulness" is the journey of many selves through many worlds, many doors, all leading back to a haunting singularity of space and time.One gets the uncanning feeling in each poem that one has been there before, or even that one, if only momentarily, exists only in and through the words that appear on the page.This is what poetry should be.There are echoes of all the greats here, from the English romantics, to Dickinson and Stevens and beyond.But, Ashbery knows how to tame these echoes, how to humour them, disinheret them, and reclaim them for his own purposes, making these poems fully his own.I highly recommend this book and any other Ashbery books.

The poet at his best!
A marvelous collection.The quote on the inner cover (by Harold Bloom) says it all "The book is a profound pleasure, the gift of a master." ... Read more

Product Description
hardcover, 166 pp; 1970 Macmillan Publishers; a collection of writings & plates of especially descriptive art. ... Read more

Product Description
Over a period of four decades--from the early 1960s until his death in 1994--artist, writer, and designer Joe Brainard contributed greatly to the arts in a number of media. From his early paintings and assemblages, which built upon the work of Jasper Johns and Joseph Cornell, to his set designs for LeRoi Jone's "The Dutchman" and Frank O'Hara's "The General Returns from One Place to Another"; from his comic book collaborations with various poets, "C Comics" and "C Comics 2", to his later drawing, collage, painting, and assemblage work, Brainard exemplified the link between avant-garde art, writing, and theater that defined the New York School. In addition to a checklist and bibliographies of work by and about Brainard, this exhibition catalogue includes the artist's published and unpublished writings, as well as interviews and letters. Also included are essays by John Ashbery, Carter Ratcliff, and Constance Lewallen, who chronicles Joe Brainard's formative years in Oklahoma and move to New York City, his involvement with Pop Art, assemblage and painting, and his literary and artistic associations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Oh Joe!
I first learned about the artist Joe Brainard in two articles published in Art In America in July 1997, written by Edmund White and by Carter Ratcliff. I saved those features and came across them recently. Sharing my renewed enthusiasm for this artist with a friend, he informed me that he had seen a wonderful retrospective of Joe Brainard at the Berkeley Art Museum last yearand that he had purchased a fine catalogue of the exhibit. I was delighted to find this incredible catalogue at Amazon.com. A tremendous overview of this underappreciated genius with relevant text and fantastic color reproductions of exhibited work. Amazing to see work created 20-30 years ago that has so obviously influenced a generation of contemporary artists. This book is highly recommended to anyone interested in contemporary art. If you don't know the work of Joe Brainard, this retrospective will impress, and if you are already an admirer of this extraordinary talent, this is a must have for your art library. ... Read more

Product Description
John Ashbery and You approaches Ashbery's critically neglected recent poetry with an ear to his use of the supremely elastic pronoun "you" and an eye toward his construction of his books as books. Together, these devices produce effects new to Ashbery's oeuvre and offer readers new ways "in" to his work. John Ashbery and You argues that starting with April Galleons (1987), and reaching an apex in Your Name Here (2000), the poet has been paying increasingly keen and affectionate attention to his readers. Vincent tracks these techniques but above all offers his readers tools to reapproach a dauntingly difficult body of work.

Some critics have suggested that Ashbery is producing books too quickly for criticism to keep up or that the later books represent, as Vincent summarizes it, "a kind of logorrhea . . . and therefore don't really register as separate events as much as episodic eruptions of one big volcano which is the Later Ashbery." Vincent contends that critics are not keeping up with Ashbery not so much because it is all of a piece, but rather because his work varies so much from volume to volume. Each of the volumes from the latter part of Ashbery's career represents an individual and different poetic project, depending precisely on the unit of the book to produce its effects.

By showing us that the entry point to Ashbery is not any given individual poem within a volume, but the entire volume, Vincent gives us a new and productive approach to reading the recent work of one of our most challenging poets. ... Read more

Product Description
Each audio production is accompanied by a book containing the texts of the poems and a commentary by J.D. McClatchy.

John Ashbery (1927) was born in Rochester, New York.He has published 19 books of poetry including Girls on the Run: A Poem (1999); Wakefulness (1998); And the Stars Were Shining (1994); A Wave (1984) which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) which received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.Ashbery was the first English-language poet to win the Grand Prix de Biennales Internationales de Poésie (Brussels), and has also received the National Book Award, The Shelley Memorial Award, and fellowships from The Academy of American Poets and the Fulbright Foundation.He is a former Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets and is currently the Charles P. Stevenson, Jr., Professor of Languages at Bard College.He divides his time between New York City and Hudson, New York. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great Selections
I have listened to these recordings until the actually tape gave out. The selections are Ashbery's most approachable and possibly best poems one can read. He reads in a relatively fast pace, and a touch on the flat side, but I mean that in a good way. He doesn't make his poetry sound precious or grand like a Stevens or Eliot. When this makes it to cd I will buy it again.

Great! But Why Only on Cassette?
This recording features Ashbery reading sixteen poems--some very short, some rather long--in order of their publication. Side one consists of "Soonest Mended," "Parergon," and "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" (yes, the whole poem!). Side two consists of "Pyrography," "Daffy Duck in Hollywood," "Wet Casements," "And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name," "My Erotic Double," "At North Farm," "More Pleasant Adventures," "Around the Rough and Rugged Rocks the Ragged Rascal Rudely Ran," "This Room," "Memories of Imperialism," "Redeemed Area," "Your Name Here," and "The Underwriters." One could wish for greater balance: there are no poems here from Ashbery's first books (those published in the '50s and '60s), and the last five poems are all from his latest book, YOUR NAME HERE. All sixteen are interesting poems, however. Unlike most of the writers in this series, Ashbery is alive; presumably he was allowed to choose which poems would be included, and one expects any writer to favor his most recent work.

The tape comes with a 63pp. book that includes the texts of the poems, excerpts from interviews, and an informative introduction by J.D. McClatchy. The back jacket reproduces the typescript of "Your Name Here."

Ashbery's reading is clear and unrushed. It is also relatively uninflected: he lets the words speak for themselves, rather than turn his readings into theatrical performances.

My only real complaint is that Random House has released this (along with the rest of this series) only on cassette. Compact discs would last longer, and they would also allow listeners to punch up individual poems instantly, without having to guess at rewinding and fast-forwarding. They'd certainly be more useful to teachers. ... Read more

Product Description
Charting the Here of There contains a world of French-American exchange--a world governed by back-and-forth, double conciousness, and the magic inherent in translation and mistranslation, as well as the fantastic, poetic mystery and possibility that comes out of this articulation "across the pond." Writers Guy Bennett and Béatrice Mousli document the high points of this ongoing exchange as it has written itself on the pages of French and American literary magazines from 1850 letterpresses through present-day web-based publishing. The result is an impeccable overview of a production that testifies to the undeniable, often indefinable bond that joins French and American poetry. The authors survey the past 150 years of transatlantic contact, making the case that literary magazines have served as the telegraph/telephone/e-mail connection for a variety of literary dialogues, permitting, with relative speed and facility, the transmission of poetry and the poetic impulse. Charting the Here of There examines the ephemeral, periodic quality of the "little review" and how it has provided a unique forum for the sustained exchange of ideas that continue to inform the writing of French and American poets. This volume is a companion to the New York Public Library exhibition Reviews of Two Worlds: French-American Literary Periodicals, 1945-2000.

By Guy Bennett and Béatrice Mousli.
Interviews with John Ashbery, Harry Mathews, Serge Fauchereau, Ron Padgett, Jacques Darras, Bill Zavatsky, Yves di Manno, Joseph Guglielmi, Jacques Roubaud, Rosmarie Waldrop, Claude Royet-Journoud, Pierre Joris, Michel Bulteau, Norma Cole, Cole Swenson, Stacy Doris and Juliete Valéry.
Afterword Rodney Phillips.

Paperback, 7 x 10 in. 166 pages, 108 b/w illustrations ... Read more

Product Description
In readings attuned to the textual, sexual and historical specificities of Ashbery's poetic project, from "Some Trees" through the vast summation of "Flow Chart", Shoptaw introduces readers to the poet's processes of production. The first reader with full access to Ashbery's manuscripts and source materials, he is able to reveal the poet at work. He shows us, for instance, how Ashbery built "Europe" and "The Skaters" upon children's books picked up at a Paris "quai" and how he drew on his own unpublished lyrics for the long dialogue "Fantasia on 'The Nut-Brown Maid'". Shoptaw argues that Ashbery's poems are less self-referential or non-representational than misrepresentative: fractious assemblies of odd details, cryptic substitutions, and artful and artless discourses. He traces Ashbery's misrepresentative poetics to diverse sources - Walt Whitman, Raymond Roussel, W.H. Auden, Gertrude Stein, Elizabeth Bishop, Jackson Pollock, and Elliot Carter, among others. Ashbery's poetry, as Shoptaw demonstrates, is inevitably "homotextual" while refraining from taking homosexuality as a topic.Ashbery disorients his poems with unexpected silences, lapses or wrong turns in arguments, mock confessions, and sudden abstractions. As this book reveals, Ashbery's misrepresentations yield a richer and stranger representation of ordinary experience. Ashbery takes his paradoxical stand on the outside looking out of an American culture and history we recognize as our own. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Brilliant study and an incredible resource
This book offers an incredibly rich and densely historicized account of Ashbery's poetry (through Flow Chart), with a lot of attention to the various contexts (Ashbery's time in France, the New York art scene) and sources (poetry, fiction, art, pop culture) that feed into the work.But Shoptaw is not just a patient and scrupulous researcher; he is also, quite simply, one of the most brilliant and persuasive poetry readers I've ever encountered.Every chapter is full of revelations--this is a book to be read slowly and savored, bit by bit.Every reader will have personal favorites; some of mine are the stunning analysis of "The Nut Brown Maid" (constructed, Shoptaw shows, from discarded manuscript fragments) and the wonderfully textured reading of "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," a poem I think I hardly was reading at all until I read it again with Shoptaw as my guide.

It's also worth noting that Shoptaw was the first critic to bring Ashbery's homosexuality into the story, not as a "hidden content" but as something that helps shape what Shoptaw terms Ashbery's "misrepresentative poetics."I often find other versions of this kind of criticism vulgarly reductive, but Shoptaw's readings, even when they draw on Ashbery's biography, always hold up--probably because it is so clear that it is Ashbery's poetry, not his life, that is Shoptaw's real subject.

In short, this book provides an unsurpassed introduction to Ashbery:learned, subtle, and intelligent (and engagingly written to boot).My main caveat is that it is not suitable for anyone looking for the one key that will all at once unlock Ashbery's difficult and protean poetry.Though theoretically informed, Shoptaw's study does not cleave to any single perspective or agenda; theory serves reading rather than the reverse.Indeed, like its notoriously elusive subject, the book is simultanously conservative and avant garde--as one might deduce from the back cover, which carries enthusiastic blurbs from both Harold Bloom and Charles Bernstein.

Poorly Articulated
I am doing extensive research for my master's thesis on Ashbery and this was by far the worst resource I could have invested in. My main complaint is that this book lacked coherence, though it seemed to have done thorough research. It did not clearly articulate ideas, but rather used every opportunity to quote fragments and attribute random details rather than clearly get at the heart of Ashbery's poetry. I found no useful arguments and it was very difficult to get through to what the author was saying. Very disappointed. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Haikuesqes Amongst John Ashbery's Lines


I take a scheduled bus from the hills of the Eastern Galilee to the capital of Israel.Thank G-d (god) the vehicle does not take a long seashore route around Samaria with its hostile population of stone throwers but boldly runs down the Jordan Valley and ascends to Jerusalem.

the Wailing Wall
on the women's side
more caper shrubbery

Darkness falls quickly. I find myself in a modern theater located in the city's best neighborhood.
Shimon Peres, an architect of the New Middle East, former minister of many ministries lends his rich voice to art festival."What language should I speak? English or Hebrew?" he asks. A quick Jewish mind
in the audience breaks out verbally:"Arabic!"
Mr. Peres delivers a do-gooder's speech advocating coexistence and cooperation. His cantor-like voice reaches far and high: "A free democratic Palestinian state!" Somebody adds "An armed one also."
"What?" says Mr. Peres, but no elucidation follows.


Old City skyline:
MINARETS, CHURCH BELL TOWERS
NO SIGN OF THE JEWS

THE FESTIVAL CONTINUES IN A TURKISH CARAVANSERAI
A STONE THROW FROM MOUNT ZION.
BARD COLLEGE PROFESSOR JOHN ASHBERY IS A CELEBRITY HERE. HE READS HIS POEMS AND THEY APPEAR ON THE SCREEN IN ENGLISH AND HEBREW.
HIS LONGER POEMS CONTAIN HAIKU-LIKE LINES:
"IN THE FLICKERING EVENING THE MARTINS GROW DENSER."
HE HAS AUTHORED HIS OWN HAIKU AND HAIBUN
BUT WHAT HE CALLS HAIKU ARE REALLY SHORT DITTIES:

"WHAT IS THE PAST,
what is it all for?
A MENTAL SANDWICH?"

WHEN MINGLING STARTS I GATHER ENOUGH CHUTZPA TO TALK TO HIM. I GIVE HIM SOME HAIKU FLIERS AND I EVEN SUGGEST WRITING RENKU TOGETHER WITH OTHER POETS.
MR. ASHBERY DISPASSIONATELY FILES MY MATERIALS.
AND HE IS LED AWAY.

JERUSALEM ROOF
4 AM-MUEZZIN, 6AM-CHURCH BELLS
SILENCE OF JEWS
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Essential
A wonderful collection of poems that rest in the small spaces in the corner of your field of vision.Some of the best of them are only 10 or so words long.Accessible, yet moving; it is hard to read more than three in one sitting.

Pick it up! ... Read more