Paradoxes and Oxymorons | Historical Context
The poems in Shadow Train were composed during an eight-month period between March and mid- October 1979. Ashbery, a New York City apartment dweller for his entire adult life, had just purchased a Victorian house in upstate New York. In his study of Ashbery’s poetry, On the Outside Looking Out, John Shoptaw speculates that “With its multiple rooms, this house may have provided a blueprint for the many-chambered volume [i.e., Shadow Train].” In a New York magazine article, “Capital Gains,” Ashbery likens the poems in Shadow Train to abstract art,...
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