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Alvin Levin, himself from the Bronx, captured life in the turbulent era of the 1930s in New York City. The stories are all told by and “outsider artist”, a writer who is never able to finish his long novel yet easily writes these small touching portraits about the poor who, in their dance halls and bars, long to live the high-life of the Park Avenue “swells.” in dance halls, and bars.
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early plays from Cambridge Poets' Theatre days ... Read more

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Early in the title work of Wakefulness, Ashbery writes: "Little by little the idea of the true way returned to me." Progressive awakenings occur in all of these poems. As we read, each of our senses is engaged, and we come to detect a search for spiritual revelations--in buildings, churches, homes, trains, and cars. Then suddenly we find ourselves back in the open, pursuing the course to Baltimore and Bucharest, to the zoo and the park, to the past and future. As ever, Ashbery's wakeful digressions are wily, comic, heartbreaking, and vertiginous.
Amazon.com Review
If John Ashbery pays any allegiance in these poems, it is to the syntax of dreams. Wakefulness captures the spirit of the sleeping mind, aplace where past, present, and future function simultaneously, and whereone might find, for instance, seraphs and parking lots, or jesters anddashboards, whimsically juxtaposed. As is often the case in dream worlds,the speaker embarks on a journey. Just where he is going remains elusive,but we do know that there is madness "in the next sleeping car" and "no release in sight." True to the unconscious mind, these poems followtheir own idiosyncratic logic, as in, "It was a misunderstanding,mudsliding / from the side where the thing was let in. / And it was allgoose, let me tell you, braided goose..." Ashbery deliberately roughens hisedges, as if he genuinely believes, as the speaker warns in "AddedPoignancy," that "millions of languages / became extinct, and not becausethere was nothing left to say in them, / but because it was all said toowell, with / nary a dewdrop on the moment of glottal expulsion."

Exceptional in their daring wordplay and rhyme, teeming with theunexpected, the eccentric, and the downright freakish, these poems capture ourattention by refusing to conform to narrative expectations. Here we enterthe mind of an exacting genius, a mind so taken with the subtleties oflanguage, with the way words are laid down, that when he states: "Each is trulya unique piece, / you said, or, perhaps, each / is a truly unique piece. Isniff the difference," we believe him. --Martha Silano ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Restrained beauty
This is a beautiful book and a number of poems in it are at the pinnacle of Ashbery's achievement.There is a musicality in some of these poems that is sometimes lacking in some of Ashbery's longer, more prose-like works. A number of these poems are breathtakingly beautiful. In parts there is a sad undertone of loss and mournfulness, which adds to the poems' detached beauty.

Ashbery at his Sharpest
If you have read "Chinese Whispers" and "Your Name Here," then "Wakefulness" is kind of the first part of that set. "Wakefulness" has its surprising slopes that only Ashbery can give us but there is also a distant cohesiveness to it that an Ashbery follower can pick up. I often try to think of a way to describe what an Ashbery poem is like as if I was explaining it to someone who might cringe at the difficulty Ashbery presents us. These poems are like a light sleep in front of the tv where commercials and sitcoms sprinkle an already watery dream: the real mixes with the dreamed real. None of these poems, and not many of Ashbery's poems, are barreling down on the reader in a straight line. Everything is smoke in a fan. Once one can step inside Ashbery's voice, then there is a comfortablity in the chaos, as there is inside our heads.

Amazing brilliances in the smallest things
Here you will find the body and mind of the post-modern world
unfolding before your eyes, with all its pleasures, its anxieties, its lost dreams, its hopes.It is the world we know, because it is already in us, part of us--it is always arriving, always arrived.But, there is more.Ashbery, through unique images and juxtapositions, brings into the open a world not quite satisfied with itself, sometimes too satisfied--in a state of suspended satisfaction, sometimes leading to nausea. It is a world looking for experiences under every log and at every corner, only to find the rates of exchange rising and the necessity for experiences increasing.It is a world placed smack dap in the impossibility of its own being.What we have in "Wakefulness" is the journey of many selves through many worlds, many doors, all leading back to a haunting singularity of space and time.One gets the uncanning feeling in each poem that one has been there before, or even that one, if only momentarily, exists only in and through the words that appear on the page.This is what poetry should be.There are echoes of all the greats here, from the English romantics, to Dickinson and Stevens and beyond.But, Ashbery knows how to tame these echoes, how to humour them, disinheret them, and reclaim them for his own purposes, making these poems fully his own.I highly recommend this book and any other Ashbery books.

The poet at his best!
A marvelous collection.The quote on the inner cover (by Harold Bloom) says it all "The book is a profound pleasure, the gift of a master." ... Read more

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According to a Victorian volume called Drawing Room Amusements (1879), in the game of Chinese Whispers "participants are arranged in a circle, and the first player whispers a story or message to the next player, and so on round the circle. The original story is then compared with the final version, which has often changed beyond recognition." In John Ashbery's latest collection, the verbal nucleus that is the incitement toward a poem undergoes changes caused not by careless listening but by endlessly proliferating trains of ideas that a word or phrase sets into motion. The poem has been transformed, often into "something rich and strange," but the strangeness is that of thought being opened up, like a geode, to reveal unexpected facets of meaning.
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Customer Reviews (3)

A tragedy and a travesty, wrapped in black and yellow
Before reading this glittering failure, I desperately feared for the future of poetry in this country; but seeing as nothing could possibly be worse than this, my fears are suddenly abated.Dear post-post-modern reader, brace yourself for the eloquent, rightfully loaded death sentence of the New York School of American poetry (now at least we have a perfectly valid excuse to plan its funeral and move on to new and better things!).At best, this centerless literary labyrinth, alive with heartless, overwrought, sharp-toothed little imps, represents a disgracefully grandiose attempt to self-promote and to further beat the already beaten-to-death poetics of the abstract expressionists, for the sole benefit of the American, eurocentric, cigar-smoking literati and its smug conformist aplomb.This is writing for the sake of seeming clever (much like this arguably unfair review), but it is taken to the most obnoxious level possible, with highly referential super-high brow humor, tensionless line breaks, tricky word riddles that seem to smirk snobbishly at you as you read; and, worst of all, there is a profound absence of emotional impact.The prose pieces are only slightly more readable.In fact, the best thing about this book is the cover, a storm of sharp, yellow ,leaf-like forms ripping into a black background - very cool.Anyway, back to the heart of the matter; if you have money to burn, don't waste it on this.Go buy a pack of gum and an issue of Hustler instead.If you're an Ashbery fan, plunge into the beautifully weird cover art and think fondly of his past work, but don't dare open the book...bad idea.

variation is the premium
I have read Ashbery's first books, such as: Some Trees, and The Double Dream of Spring, Houseboat Days, and also much of the Selected Poems, and I think this latest book, Chinese Whispers, is comparable to his best work.
As I read Chinese Whispers, and then reread it, I found how it is similar to the variation found in an anthology. TheBest American Poetry 2003 contains all kinds of forms and tones, etc. and Ashbery, in C. W. takes on this kind of task, the task of not settling in a rhythm, to keep moving. Even toward the winter of his career, Ashbery is still searching; he seems to still be searching like a beginning poet, yet a new poet with a strong voice.

Downhill Still
The mild decline of a great talent continues.Johnny hasn't been on point since Wakefulness, but we can thank somebody that this collection, however mediocre, still easily trumps the ghastly "...Rain".Please--I adore Ashbery, so no hot-dung tossing.There are some great pieces in this latest:"Little Sick Poem", "Half-Kiss'd", the second to last poem whose title escapes me...

...go to the library, but don't buy the thing unless you're compiling a comprehensive collection.A lot of blubber, filler.

I'd give it 2.5 stars, if I could--the last half gold. ... Read more

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Charting the Here of There contains a world of French-American exchange--a world governed by back-and-forth, double conciousness, and the magic inherent in translation and mistranslation, as well as the fantastic, poetic mystery and possibility that comes out of this articulation "across the pond." Writers Guy Bennett and Béatrice Mousli document the high points of this ongoing exchange as it has written itself on the pages of French and American literary magazines from 1850 letterpresses through present-day web-based publishing. The result is an impeccable overview of a production that testifies to the undeniable, often indefinable bond that joins French and American poetry. The authors survey the past 150 years of transatlantic contact, making the case that literary magazines have served as the telegraph/telephone/e-mail connection for a variety of literary dialogues, permitting, with relative speed and facility, the transmission of poetry and the poetic impulse. Charting the Here of There examines the ephemeral, periodic quality of the "little review" and how it has provided a unique forum for the sustained exchange of ideas that continue to inform the writing of French and American poets. This volume is a companion to the New York Public Library exhibition Reviews of Two Worlds: French-American Literary Periodicals, 1945-2000.

By Guy Bennett and Béatrice Mousli.
Interviews with John Ashbery, Harry Mathews, Serge Fauchereau, Ron Padgett, Jacques Darras, Bill Zavatsky, Yves di Manno, Joseph Guglielmi, Jacques Roubaud, Rosmarie Waldrop, Claude Royet-Journoud, Pierre Joris, Michel Bulteau, Norma Cole, Cole Swenson, Stacy Doris and Juliete Valéry.
Afterword Rodney Phillips.

Paperback, 7 x 10 in. 166 pages, 108 b/w illustrations ... Read more

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A book-length poem that is at once tragic and hilarious.

Girls on the Run is a poem loosely based on the works of the "outsider" artist Henry Darger (1892-1972), a recluse who toiled for decades at an enormous illustrated novel about the adventures of a plucky band of little girls. The Vivians are threatened by human tormentors, supernatural demons, and cataclysmic storms; their calmer moments are passed in Edenic landscapes. Darger traced the figures from comic strips, coloring books, and other ephemeral sources, filling in the backgrounds with luscious watercolor. John Ashbery's Girls on the Run creates a similar childlike world of dreamy landscapes, lurking terror, and veiled eroticism. Its fractured narrative mode almost (but never quite) coalesces into a surrealist adventure story for juvenile adults.
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Customer Reviews (6)

3.75 stars : I, too, find him prepossessing
Predictable surprises -- and a few unpredictable ones -- inhabit this volume, a single long poem loosely based on the illustrations of Henry Darger. There are chuckleworthy phrases that rattle about the brain with a happy insouciance for several days after one has read the thing. "The oxymoron gets his rocks off" and "pink shrouds fell on the pansy jamboree."And we like going for the ride, even if we get a little dizzy and a little seasick. The "androgynous truths" bubble perkily to the surface, in a verbal universe where what matters matters as much as what doesn't matter.We know a few of the magician's tricks, but there are always a few swerves and slides which we can't anticipate. The honey drips from a blighted bough -- or is it a bright and sprightly bough? -- and the housepets lap the gruel in their gaily-coloured bowls, and the narrator stands back and lets it all happen.As with anything by Ashbery, there are unwholesome things and things from which the reader runs away, but we marvel at the ingenuity nonetheless.

Ashbery and Naive Literature
I picked this up on impulse. I'm interested in the work of Henry J. Darger. But I was not taken by this book at all. Ashbery flows a lot of beautiful verbiage together. But it's incomprehensible at a first readingand I'm not going to spend more time trying to root anything out of it. Itseems like a lot of surrealist automatic writing. There were occasionalimages that would surface in an appealing way like, "count the dogs asfurniture as otherwise there will be no chairs," but few of the imagesrecurred enough to give any sense of narrative or unifying theme. I betDarger's naive literature is a lot more fascinating than this.

Pastoral, apocalyptic fin-de-siecle masterpiece
I, too, have always admired but never been bowled over by John Ashberry's work. With this work I am convinced he is our greatest American poet.Since I am familiar with Henry Darger's pictures and style, Ashberry'simagery seems natural even as it is surreal.The two share an aesthetic ofusing common cultural artifacts and twisting them so that even thoughyou're staring right at them, you no longer recognize what you're seeing.It is a dream language, and Ashberry has never been so adept at navigatingthat territory. The poetry, like Darger's paintings, mix the pastoral andthe apocalyptic, the innocent and the decadent with such unsettlingvirtuostic ease that you're not sure which is which. If I had to pick apoetry to compare it to, I might pick Blake--both for the lyric sweetnessand hinted threats of "Innocence and Experience," and thecultural commentary/prophecy of his later, longer work. If, like me, yourexperience with Ashberry's work has left you shrugging, this os the placeto start. I don't read much poetry anymore--this will reaffirm your faithin it.

Most great
Words very good, yes. Ashbery writes best good book. Yes, buy it, good, yes.

Good beach reading!
This is the very favorite book that I read.It has an author by John Ashbery.It is real poetry.I wanted to read it 2x before I read it.It is good for the beach reading (date: June 18).Please bring a dictionaryto look up the different words.Who are the girls (names)?I took thisbook to everywhere I was going one day and finished that book in 3 daysafter going 19 places.Please read this enjoyable imagination. ... Read more

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Joseph Cornell is a legendary yet living presence in American art. His famous boxes, with their ineffably perfect choice of elements--the stuffed birds, the buttons and toys, the fragments of old theatrical posters, the poignant allusions to the worlds of the nineteenth-century ballet and opera--are some of the most recognizable signatures in all of twentieth-century art. From this extended selection of his diaries and other written material, Cornell emerges as a deeply dedicated and conscious artist, though one whose personality was every bit as unusual as many had perceived. Cornell used his diaries as he used his boxes, to capture and preserve his passing feelings, his momentary urges, and his anguished hesitations. He was an incessant and brilliant recorder of his thoughts as he considered his art or traveled to New York to haunt the antiquarian bookstores and shops where he collected material for his boxes. We see here his deep immersion in French symbolist poetry and his intense interest in his surrealist contemporaries. We see also his plangent yearning for "les sylphides," the fairies of the ballet world who seemed to be reincarnated for him in the form of waitresses, dancers, actresses, and shop girls in his own world. Cornell corresponded with an astonishing range of people including Parker Tyler, Marianne Moore, Tony Curtis, Robert Motherwell, and Susan Sontag. His letters were often sent in the form of collages, and several of them are reproduced in this book. Mary Ann Caws has edited these diaries from a vast collection of scribbled notes and journals left by Cornell. Her text, which provides an extended introduction to the life and work of Cornell, traces the unique correspondence of the life, the art, and the writings of a great American artist. Foreword by John Ashbery; introduction by Robert Motherwell. 24 b/w illustrations. ... Read more

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John Ashbery's "Collected Poems 1956-1987" contains the complete text of the poet's first twelve books, from "Some Trees" (1956), selected for publication by W.H. Auden, to "April Galleons" (1987), and including "The Vermont Notebook" (1975) with the original artwork by Joe Brainard, and "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" (1976), which won the Pulitzer Prize, together with a selection of more than sixty previously uncollected poems. To read Ashbery's work in sequence is to experience the magnitude of his presence in American poetry over these four decades, as innovator and influence. His poetry, 'an exuberant script for survival' (Marina Warner), 'light-footed and delectably irresponsible' (Alfred Brendel), fascinates with virtuosic complexity and delights with wry humour. A restless explorer of the modern world, alive to language and impression, Ashbery enlarges the possibilities of poetry. With a detailed chronology and notes on the poems, "Collected Poems 1956-1987" is an indispensable compilation of the work of one of the essential poets of our time. ... Read more

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This is the catalogue of an exhibition in 1995 at the Whitney Museum, New York, of developments in contemporary American art, film and video. It focuses on the 80 artists in the exhibition, all of whom emphasize metaphor, allegory, and/or symbol in their art. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Sumptuous, beautifully done
If you don't know Jane Freilicher's paintings, here's a way to get a gorgeous dose of them quickly. The introduction by John Ashbery is insightful and makes it clear why Ms. Freilicher is an important contemporary artist.This is more than a coffee table book; it's a treasure.

Jane Freilicher, by Klaus Kertess
Books published by Harry N Abrams Inc are to art books what the Joy of Cooking is to cookbooks; standard-setters for excellence of text, reproductions, and layout.This one informed me both by connecting Freilich to her cohort (the gereration around her) of painters and poets and by giving me excellent commentary on the works reproduced in the book.

I cannot make sense of talk about a painting if I cannot see the painting, or a reproduction of that painting.Kertess does this.He also evinces the ability to draw out from almost-incidental details a great deal more than met my rather inexperienced and ignorant eye.I "know what I like" and like her work, but Kertess elarged my sphere of why her work attracts me, why I enjoy it so much, and how I am connected to the vast stream of art in history by being influenced not only by her work, but by those of her art cohort, those making waves in the Fifties and onwards.Anyone attrracted to the cover of this book will LOVE its interior!

An Artist's Artist
Few contemporary artists whose work has spanned the past half century have the committed following personally and artistically as Jane Freilicher.Through the explosions of America's art movement - Abstract Expressionism - and through the various other trends in art that have enhanced our art scene, Freilicher's lovely canvases have always stood as oases of tranquility and grounding.This magnificently produced monograph could not be more fitting for such a fine artist.

What makes Freilicher's art so meaningful?Surely not the choice of subject matter which has always been the New York Skylines, Long Island porches, gardens and vistas, and table tops with explosions of flowers plucked from the garden.No, it is not the subject but instead the honesty of simple approach to the subject, capturing nature and life as a state of intimacy and worthy of realistic representation. The more than 150 images make their own ebullient and colorful statements, defying reduction to words.

Not that the accompanying words don't enhance Freilicher's art! The texts are by poet and longtime friend John Ashbery and the fine art historianKlaus Kertess.The essays inform the art almost as much as the art informs the quality of writing.In every way this is a first class monograph of a growingly important artist of our time.Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, December 05

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This reissue of a book of thirty-nine poems, first collected in 1977, reminds us of Ashbery's astonishing explorations (to use Donald Barthelme's words) of places where no one has ever been. "Wet Casements," "Syringa," "Loving Mad Tom," and the long "Fantasia on 'The Nut-Brown Maid,'" which concludes the book, are among the riches in a collection of dazzling eloquence and power.
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Customer Reviews (2)

Houseboat Days
"Houseboat Days" was the first book of John Ashbery that I read many years ago.I was fascinated and frustrated by it then and still am.I wanted to focus on this book in reading the Library of America's new collection of Asbury's poems from 1956 -- 1987.

Ashbery (b. 1927) received wide recognition with his book "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" (1975) which won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.The long title poem of the volume, which is based upon a 1524 painting by Parmigianino, remains Ashbery's masterpiece.

"Houseboat Days" (1977) was Ashbery's next book of poems following "Self-Portrait" and was itself a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The volume consists of 39 poems, including a long final poem, "Fantasia on 'The Nut-Brown Maid'" based upon a 16th Century ballad. The poem is a dialogue between characters denominated "He" and "She" on the battle of the sexes, followed by a concluding section in prose. Ashbery made liberal use of lines from his earlier poetry. This long work has not attained the stature of the "Self-Portrait."Instead, the "Houseboat Days" collection is known for its shorter poems.

Ashbery's poetry is difficult, dense, and disjointed. I think it should be read with a sense of play and freedom and that the temptation to paraphrase should be avoided.In its meditative, philosophical character, Ashbery's work follows on that of Wallace Stevens, the poet who most influenced Ashbery. This is avant-garde modernistic writing, and Ashbery wants to help himself and the reader see the world anew without cliches or preconceptions.Yet Ashbery is deeply rooted in his past, and many of his works evidence a sense of nostalgia. The language of his poems shifts, frequently mid-stream, from passages of beauty and formalism to colloquialisms and platitudes. Tenses and pronouns likewise shift repeatedly. There is a sense of plurality, of everydayness, and of finding joy in the commonplace that I think works in these poetic meditations.

Each reader will probably find individual poems in "Houseboat Days" to enjoy and will find others to pass over. I think it is important not to get frustrated or to press too hard in one's reading. The poems that I enjoyed included the title poem, "Houseboat Days", the first two poems, "Street Musicians" and "The Other Tradition", Pyrography", "And Ut Pictura Poesis is her Name", "Loving Mad Tom", and "Syringia". I was able to respond to these poems with some effort. I will discuss three of these poems very briefly below.

"Houseboat Days" seems to be a key poem on the value of understanding change and accepting life as it comes. The poem is critical of a narrow view of reasoning and of the "insincerity of arguing on behalf of one's/ sincere convictions, true or false in themselves." Ashbery writes further: "But I don't set much stock in things/Beyond the weather and the certainties of living and dying:/The rest is optional."

Ashbery wrote the poem "Pyrography" at the invitation of the United States Department of the Interior to celebrate the Bicentennial in 1976. This poem seems to be a journey across America, in both time and place.The poem emphasizes the importance of the everyday parts of life that do not get recounted in histories: "To be able to write the history of our time, starting with today,/It would be necessary to model all these unimportant details/So as to be able to include them; otherwise the narrative/Would have that flat sandpapered look the sky gets/Out in the middle west toward the end of summer."

In "Syringia" Ashbery retells the myth of Orpheus in a deflated way with himself as hero. Euridyce appears in the poem but her role is downplayed.Ashbery describes Orpheus's power of song, and how this was the cause of his destruction by the gods: "Some say it was for his treatment of Euridyce./ But probably the music had more to do with it,and/The way music passes,emblematic/Of life and how you cannot isolate a note of it/And say it is good or bad.You must/Wait till it's over.'The end crowns all'". As the poem progresses, Ashbery becomes Orpheus, dealing with the difficult subjects of modernity and everydayness.

Ashbery's poetry may not be for every reader. Most readers will want to explore his work and this volume selectively. "Houseboat Days" remains a good introduction to Ashbery. Those readers wanting to explore modernistic sensibilities in poetry will find this collection rewarding.

Robin Friedman

Impossibly brilliant and moving
One of the great works of art of this century.Although less well-known than "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror", this, along with "The Double Dream of Spring" is Ashbery's best book. ... Read more

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Raymond Roussel's poetry, novels and plays have had a significant influence on the work of many of the 20th century's writers. This account of Roussel's life and oeuvre traces the evolution of his bizarre compositional methods, and shows the idiosyncracies of his structured life. ... Read more

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No one's reviewed this?
Just a quick note to say that this is a lovely & well written biography of Raymond Roussel in English which neatly complements the one by François Caradec, which is also well worth getting. Ford's includes information on texts discovered since Caradec's biography was written; it's slightly more text-based than Roussel's more biographical study. But anything on Roussel in English makes me deliriously happy . . . ... Read more

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Giacometti’s sculptures have become icons of modernism. Since the 1960s, poet and critic John Ashbery’s limited-edition translation of Jacques Dupin’s seminal essay on Giacometti has been legendary in art circles. Now, for the first time, this essay by Dupin — one of France’s greatest curators as well as Giacometti’s dealer and close friend — is made available. ... Read more