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And the Stars Were Shining, John Ashbery's sixteenth collection, strikes out into new territory and engages the reader in unexpected ways. In their relative brevity they display all the valiant wit and rich lyric intensity which readers know from Ashberry's expansive longer work.
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Chasing Meaning Out Of Assumed Appearances
And The Stars Were Shining By John Ashbery

John Ashbery's penchant for the long, discursively philosophic poem has sometimes served to distract critical attention from his mastery of intensely conceived shortlyrics.

We all have a favourite Ashbery flavour, and mine is the gin-fizzdynamic at work in the relative brevity displayed by the best of theshorter poems gathered in this collection. In fact, I would argue that youwould have to go back to Houseboat Days (1977), to find a comparablesuccess in terms of Ashbery's ability to compress poetic experience into anaccommodatingly resonant tension-field. With Ashbery's method there isalways the danger that expansiveness contributes to fluctuating air-pocketsin the poem's flight-path, and the reader's encounter with inconsistentlysustained epics like Flow Chart is one of locating pivotal wobble in thestratosphere of Ashbery's poetics.

Ashbery's lyric concerns areinvariably with retrieving the moment from unrecorded notice. It's thetransient nature of experience underscored by a deep sense of loss whichfires Ashbery into attempting to arrest whatever proves meaningful to hisimpulsive plot. As he writes in 'The Improvement':

"We never live longenough in our lives/ to know what today is like./ Shards, smiling beaches,/abandon us somehow even as we converse with them./ And the leopard istransparent, like iced tea."

Ashbery's acute sense of being disinheritedfrom the world of things, and the poem is an attempt to establish discoursewith this aesthetic, has him incessantly preoccupied with chasing meaningout of assumed appearances. His way is to puzzle worry into potentialexistential crisis:

"Nothing seems strong enough for/ this life tomanage, that sees beyond/ into particles forming some kind of entity -/ Sowe get dressed kindly, crazy at the moment./ A life of afterwordsbegins."

('The Improvement')

Ashbery's disorientated, upended approachto his subject matter imparts the feel of innovative modernism to his work.And while his poetry is personal by way of its predominantly quietdisclosures: 'I never get hangovers until late afternoon/ and then it'slike a souvenir, an arrangement,' he is never confessional in the manner ofRobert Lowell or Sylvia Plath. Ashbery's quiet presence permeates, butnever crowds his lyrics. Some of the finest poems to be found in thiscollection, 'Works On Paper I,' 'Ghost Riders Of The Moon,' 'Free NailPolish,' 'Local Time,' 'My Gold Chain' succeed by playing enigmaticnarrative against specific visual imagery. In the best of Ashbery theabstract and the concrete unite to impart allusive mystery to the poem. Theending of 'Works On Paper I' perfectly demonstrates what Ashbery doesbest.

"Those who wish to remain naked are coaxed out of laughter/ withtea and nobody's nose is to the grindstone/ anymore, I bet, and you canfigure out these shivering trees./ But the owner of the bookstore know thatthe flea was blown/ out of all proportion,/ with September steps to go downin passing/ before the tremendous dogs are unleased."

Here thejuxtaposition of the disarmingly casual and the lyrically authoritativecombine to create Ashbery's inimitable tang of urbane poetry, a genre heorchestrates with consummate ease throughout this sparkling collection. Ifby comparison the long title poem suffers from a characteristic lack offocus, then the poem's obliqueness and obscurity are counterpointed byAshbery's inexhaustibly pitched poetic eloquence.

JEREMY REED

One of the most personal poetry voices keeps showing charm.
And the stars were shining seems to be a minor Ashberry's work, but don'tbe confused...a great poet is always great. This book is especiallydelightful. Ashberry plays with the dazed reader making a strange andconfusing mixture of images and sounds (something like watching "LostHighway", by David Lynch), painting everything with his particularsense of humour and his vision of life. A bit flamboyant, but completelygreat. To miss it is a crime, as every vulgarity. ... Read more

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By John Ashbery. Artwork by James Bishop. Contributions by Dieter Schwartz, Jane Necol. ... Read more

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You meant more than life to me. I lived
through you not knowing, not knowing I
was living.
I learned that you called for me. I came to
where you were living, up a stair. There
was no one there.
No one to appreciate me. The legality of it
upset a chair. Many times to celebrate
we were called together and where
we had been there was nothing there,
nothing that is anywhere. We passed
obliquely,
leaving no stare. When the sun was done
muttering,
in an optimistic way, it was time to leave
that there.

-- from "The New Higher" ... Read more

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a poem in prose, miniature book format ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Unbelievable
All I have to say is that ... this was the greatest thing I've ever read!

GREAT BOOK
Wow I was amazed at the writing of this book. It was so organzied and flowing. Anyone who wants to read about the weather and learn new information, this is your book. ... Read more

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During his career John Ashbery has been hailed as the "eminence grise" of postmodernism, championed by W.H. Auden and has carried off every major literary prize. His startling work alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) playful and recondite, affirms poetry's power to astonish and tackle fundamentals. Drawn from the work he published up to 1984, from the spare, beautiful lyrics of "Some Trees" and the disjunctive, experimentalism of "The Tennis Court Oath", to the powerful mediations on subjectivity of "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" and "A Wave", this collection makes a wide range of this poet's writing available. ... Read more

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Selected Prose 1953-2003 presents for the first time in one volume many essays on authors who have influenced John Ashbery's development as a major voice in poetry. They are arranged chronologically to assist the reader in following the development of Ashbery as a poet. These critical works are as essential to the cultural and literary history of twentieth-century poetry as are the critical prose of T.S. Eliot and W. H. Auden. They vividly portray a literary sensibility which is one of the most important in the development of poetry in English over the last century and equally influential on poetry and art in the twenty-first century. ... Read more

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In this collection, first published in 1987, John Ashbery--"one of his generation's most gifted and eloquent poets" (Michuko Kakutani, The New York Times)--offers some of his most intimate and direct poems. With breathtaking freshness, he writes of mutability, of the passage of time, and of growth, decay, and death as they are reflected in both ourselves and the changing of the seasons. By turns playful, melancholy, and mysterious, the poems in April Galleons reaffirm the extraordinary powers that have made Ashbery such a significant figure in the American literary landscape.
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