Books about Ashbery from Amazon.com

His long-awaited volume, a new selection of his later poems, spans ten major collections by one of America's most visionary and influential poets. Chosen by the author himself, the poems in Notes from the Air represent John Ashbery's best work from the past two decades, from the critically acclaimed April Galleons and Flow Chart to the 2005 National Book Award finalist Where Shall I Wander.

While Ashbery has long been considered a powerful force in twentieth-century culture, Notes from the Air demonstrates clearly how important and relevant his writing continues to be, well into the twenty-first century. Many of the books from which these poems are drawn are regularly taught in university classrooms across the country, and critics and scholars vigorously debate his newest works as well as his classics. He has already published four major books since the turn of the new millennium, and, although 2007 marks his eightieth birthday, this legendary literary figure continues to write fresh, new, and vibrant poetry that remains as stimulating, provocative, and controversial as ever.

Notes from the Air reveals, for the first time in one volume, the remarkable evolution of Ashbery's poetry from the mid-1980s into the new century, and offers an irresistible sampling of some of the finest work by this "national treasure."

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Price: $19.12 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Thrill of a Romance

It's different when you have hiccups
Everything is—so many glad hands competing
for your attention, a scarf, a puff of soot,
or just a blast of silence from a radio.
What is it? That's for you to learn
to your dismay when, at the end of a long queue
in the cafeteria, tray in hand, they tell you the gate closed down
after the Second World War. Syracuse was declared capital
of a nation in malaise, but the directorate
had other, hidden goals. To proclaim logic
a casualty of truth was one.

Everyone's solitude (and resulting promiscuity)
perfumed the byways of villages we had thought civilized.
I saw you waiting for a streetcar and pressed forward.
Alas, you were only a child in armor. Now when ribald toasts
sail round a table too fair laid out, why the consequences
are only dust, disease and old age. Pleasant memories
are just that. So I channel whatever
into my contingency, a vein of mercury
that keeps breaking out, higher up, more on time
every time. Dirndls spotted with obsolete flowers,
worn in the city again, promote open discussion.

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Price: $7.89 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Jess: To and From the Printed Page focuses on the artist simply known as "Jess" (1923-2004), and celebrates his lively and lifelong dialogue with poets, poetry and printed matter. Published to accompany the iCI touring exhibition, it features collages made for publication, the books and magazines in which they were reproduced, as well as many previously unreproduced paintings, drawings and assemblages. The book offers a fresh perspective on Jess's work by specifically addressing the interrelation between his art and the California literary culture of which he was a part. It also explores the intimacy of the collaborations and conversations in which he participated over five decades, and points to his effect on younger artists today--through his use of "pop" materials in collage and paint, his early homoerotic themes and his enjoyment of the book format as a compositional vehicle..
Price: $18.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The first anthology of writings by Roussel, a legendary eccentric who influenced artists as diverse as Duchamp and Gide; contains selections from most of his major works..
Price: $10.74 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $4.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

John Ashbery writes like no one else among contemporary American poets. In the construction of his intricate patterns, he uses words much as the contemporary painter uses form and color- words painstakingly chosen as conveyors of precise meaning, not as representations of sound. These linked in unexpected juxtapositions, at first glance unrelated and even anarchic, in the end create by their clashing interplay a structure of dazzling brilliance and strong emotional impact. From this preoccupation arises a poetry that passes beyond conventional limits into a highly individual realm of effectiveness, one that may be roughly likened to the visual world of Surrealist painting. Some will find Mr. Ashbery's work difficult, even forbidding; but those who are sensitive to new directions in ideas and the arts will discover here much to quicken and delight them.

A 35th anniversary edition of classic work from a celebrated American poet who has received the Pulitzer Prize, the national Book Award, and the national Book Critics Circle Award. John Ashbery's second book, The Tennis Court Oaths, first published by Wesleyan in 1962, remains a touchstone of contemporary avant-garde poetry..
Price: $7.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Abraham Lincoln read it with approval, but Emily Dickinson described its bold language and themes as "disgraceful." Ralph Waldo Emerson found it "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet produced." Published at the author's expense on July 4, 1855, Leaves of Grass inaugurated a new voice and style into American letters and gave expression to an optimistic, bombastic vision that took the nation as its subject. Unlike many other editions of Leaves of Grass, which reproduce various short, early versions, this Modern Library Paperback Classics "Death-bed" edition presents everything Whitman wrote in its final form, and includes newly commissioned notes..
Price: $8.36 [Notify me when price goes down.]