Ashbery, John (Vol. 2) | Ashbery, John 1927–
Ashbery, John 1927–
An American experimental poet whose best-known collections are The Tennis Court Oath and Rivers and Mountains. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8, rev. ed.)
Ashbery [is] a very difficult and perhaps impossible poet … Some Trees is made up of poems which display a great deal of irresponsible yet often engaging imagination. With one half of the mind feeling like a mystified but somehow willing accomplice, and the other half becoming more and more skeptical, one follows the bright, faddish jargon Ashbery talks with considerable obscure brightness, trying patiently, with some engagement, to decide which of several possible meanings each poem intends. The poems have over them a kind of idling arbitrariness, offering their elements as a profound conjunction of secrecies one can't quite define or evaluate. One doesn't feel, however, that Mr. Ashbery has been at great pains to fabricate these...
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