John Ashbery and American Poetry

David Herd

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780719080593
• eBook ISBN: 9781526185808
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Poetry
• Index: Literature

David Herd sets out to provide readers with a new critical language through which they can appreciate the beauty and complexity of Ashbery's writing.Presenting the poet in all his forms –avant-garde, nostalgic, sublime and camp – the book argues that the perpetual inventiveness of Ashbery's work has always been underpinned by the poets desire to write the poem fit to cope with its occasion.Tracing Ashbery's development in the light of this idea, and from its origins in the dazzling artistic environment of 1950's New York, the book evaluates his poetry against the aesthetic, literary and historical backgrounds that have informed it.The story of a brilliant career, and a history of the period in which that career has taken shape, John Ashbery and American Poetry provides a compelling account of Ashbery's importance to Twentieth Century Literature.

Table of contents

• JOHN ASHBERYAND AMERICAN POETRY
• Half Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: John Ashbery's sense of occasion
• ONE Two scenes: the early poetry and its backgrounds
• TWO The art of life: collaboration and the New York School
• THREE An American in Paris: The Tennis Court Oath and the poetics of exile
• FOUR Forms of action: experiment and declaration in Rivers and Mountains and The Double Dream of Spring
• FIVE From poetry to prose: the sceptical tradition of Three Poems
• SIX John Ashbery in conversation: the communicative value of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror and Houseboat Days
• SEVEN John Ashbery and friends: the poet and his communities in Shadow Train and A Wave
• EIGHT 'And later, after the twister': the sense of an ending in recent Ashbery
• Bibliography
• Index