- 118 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
About this book
Dating from one of the most studied creative periods of John Ashbery's career, a groundbreaking collection showcasing his signature polyphonic poem "Litany"
First published in 1979, four years after Ashbery's masterpiece Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, the poems in As We Know represent the great American poet writing at the peak of his experimental powers. The book's flagship poem, the seventy-page "Litany," remains one of the most exciting and challenging of Ashbery's career. Presented in two facing columns, the poem asks to be read as independent but countervailing monologues, creating a dialogue of the private and the public, the human and the divine, the real and the unreal—a wild and beautiful conversation that contains multitudes.
As We Know also collects some of Ashbery's most witty, self-reflexive interrogations of poetry itself, including "Late Echo" and "Five Pedantic Pieces" ("An idea I had and talked about / Became the things I do"), as well as a wry, laugh-out-loud call-and-response sequence of one-line poems on Ashbery's defining subject: the writing of poetry ("I Had Thought Things Were Going Along Well / But I was mistaken"). Perhaps the most admired poem in this much-discussed volume is "Tapestry," a measured exploration of the inevitable distance that arises between art, audience, and artist, which the critic Harold Bloom called "an 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' for our time."
Built of doubles, of echoes, of dualities and combinations, As We Know is the breathtaking expression of a singular American voice.
First published in 1979, four years after Ashbery's masterpiece Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, the poems in As We Know represent the great American poet writing at the peak of his experimental powers. The book's flagship poem, the seventy-page "Litany," remains one of the most exciting and challenging of Ashbery's career. Presented in two facing columns, the poem asks to be read as independent but countervailing monologues, creating a dialogue of the private and the public, the human and the divine, the real and the unreal—a wild and beautiful conversation that contains multitudes.
As We Know also collects some of Ashbery's most witty, self-reflexive interrogations of poetry itself, including "Late Echo" and "Five Pedantic Pieces" ("An idea I had and talked about / Became the things I do"), as well as a wry, laugh-out-loud call-and-response sequence of one-line poems on Ashbery's defining subject: the writing of poetry ("I Had Thought Things Were Going Along Well / But I was mistaken"). Perhaps the most admired poem in this much-discussed volume is "Tapestry," a measured exploration of the inevitable distance that arises between art, audience, and artist, which the critic Harold Bloom called "an 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' for our time."
Built of doubles, of echoes, of dualities and combinations, As We Know is the breathtaking expression of a singular American voice.
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Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access As We Know by John Ashbery in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & American Poetry. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Contents
- Publisher's Note
- Litany
- Sleeping in the Corners of Our Lives
- Silhouette
- Many Wagons Ago
- As We Know
- Figures in a Landscape
- Statuary
- Otherwise
- Five Pedantic Pieces
- Flowering Death
- Haunted Landscape
- My Erotic Double
- I Might Have Seen It
- The Hills and Shadows of a New Adventure
- Knocking Around
- Not Only / But Also
- Train Rising Out of the Sea
- Late Echo
- And I'd Love You To Be in It
- Tapestry
- The Preludes
- A Box and Its Contents
- The Cathedral Is
- I Had Thought Things Were Going Along Well
- Out Over the Bay the Rattle of Firecrackers
- We Were on the Terrace Drinking Gin and Tonics
- Fallen Tree
- The Picnic Grounds
- A Sparkler
- The Wine
- A Love Poem
- There's No Difference
- Distant Relatives
- Histoire Universelle
- Hittite Lullaby
- In a Boat
- Variations on an Original Theme
- Homesickness
- This Configuration
- Metamorphosis
- Their Day
- A Tone Poem
- The Other Cindy
- No, But I Seen One You Know You Don't Own
- The Shower
- Landscapeople
- The Sun
- The Plural of "Jack-in-the-Box"
- About the Author
- Copyright