Other Traditions

John Ashbery

• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9780674006645, 9780674003156
• eBook ISBN: 9780674971196
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Poetry
• Index: Literature

One of the greatest living poets in English here explores the work of six writers he often finds himself reading "in order to get started" when writing, poets he turns to as "a poetic jump-start for times when the batteries have run down." Among those whom John Ashbery reads at such times are John Clare, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Raymond Roussel, John Wheelwright, Laura Riding, and David Schubert. Less familiar than some, under Ashbery's scrutiny these poets emerge as the powerful but private and somewhat wild voices whose eccentricity has kept them from the mainstream--and whose vision merits Ashbery's efforts, and our own, to read them well.



Deeply interesting in themselves, Ashbery's reflections on these poets of "another tradition" are equally intriguing for what they tell us about Ashbery's own way of reading, writing, and thinking. With its indirect clues to his work and its generous and infectious appreciation of a remarkable group of poets, this book conveys the passion, delight, curiosity, and insight that underlie the art and craft of poetry for writer and reader alike. Even as it invites us to discover the work of poets in Ashbery's other tradition, it reminds us of Ashbery's essential place in our own.

Index

Adams, Barbara, 113–114

Amherst College, 125–126

Apollinaire, Guillaume: Les Mamelles de Tirésias, 63

Aragon, Louis: Le Paysan de Paris, 59

Art and Literature, 100

Art News Annual, 48

Ashbery, John: “The Thinnest Shadow,” 118–119

Auden, W. H., 2, 4, 118, 123; The Criterion Book of Modern American Verse, 159n23; Nineteenth-Century British Minor Poets, 6–8; The Sea and the Mirror, 123–124, 128–129

Baird, Theodore, 125

Baring-Gould, Sabine: “Lost and Hostile Gospels,” 75

Barnes, William, 7

Barth, John, 3

Baudelaire, Charles, 138

Beddoes, Anna, 24–25

Beddoes, Thomas, Dr., 24–25

Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, 5, 95–96; early years, 23–25; residence in Germany/Switzerland, 23, 26–29; suicide of, 23–24, 29–30; homosexuality of, 24; at Oxford University, 25–26; medical studies at Göttingen, 26–28; as poet of fragments, 26, 32, 37, 42; poetic dramas of, 26–29, 35–42; interest in Judaism, 28; editions of, 30–31; and nature, 34–35; atheism of, 40

WORKS: “The Bride’s Tragedy,” 26, 35–37; Collected Works, 30–31; “A Crocodile,” 34; “Death’s Jest Book,” 27–29, 37–41; “Dream-Pedlary,” 24, 31, 42–44; “Eve of Saint Agnes,” 26; “The Improvisatore,” 25; “The Last Man,” 26; “Love’s Arrow Poisoned,” 26, 41; “Scaroni,” 25; “The Second Brother,” 27, 37; “To a Bunch of Grapes,” 26; “Torrismond,” 27, 37

Belitt, Ben, 127, 133, 141

Bertin, Emile, 64

Bishop, Elizabeth, 4

Bizarre, 48

Blackmur, R. P., 77

Blake, William, 13, 21

Bloom, Harold, 13, 21, 102; The Visionary Company, 31

Bourne, J. G. H., 27

Breton, André, 50

Brooks, Peter Chardon, 73

Browning, Robert, 30

Burne-Jones, Edward, 76, 88

Burns, Robert, 33

Butor, Michel, 47

Byron, George Gordon, 13, 23; Don Juan, 14–15

Cage, John, 68

Caradec, François, 48, 50, 59

Clare, John, 3, 5, 23–24, 26, 31, 95; early years, 8, 11; first success, 8, 10; trips to London, 8–9; wa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Preface
• Contents
• I John Clare: “Grey Openings Where the Light Looks Through”
• II Olives and Anchovies: The Poetry of Thomas Lovell Beddoes
• III The Bachelor Machines of Raymond Roussel
• IV “Why Must You Know?”: The Poetry of John Wheelwright
• V “The Unthronged Oracle”: Laura Riding
• VI David Schubert: “This Is the Book That No One Knows”
• Notes
• Index