Description
Book SynopsisJohn Ashbery's new collection of fifty-one poems ends with the substantial piece that gives the book its title. Composed in stanzaic prose, it is a fine specimen of his distinctive courtship mode, wooing the language with language, teasing it and teasing out of it a Protean lover that loves Protean him back: a you, an I, in a wild variety of registers and postures. Throughout "Where Shall I Wander" the effable and ineffable are in dialogue; time ('then' and 'now') and the stable moments of the poem are within earshot of one another, but cannot ever quite touch hands. There are ghosts and presences, some unexpected like Ali Baba, Arabia Deserta (down to the turning spit and braised goat) and Mrs Hanratty's apron; others like Holderlin are more insistently entertained, in a poetry that fractures and reinvents syntax, cadence and our sense of beauty, this tribute informed by the terror of Holderlin's later world in which it is impossible not to share.
Trade Review'Among the poets of the New York School, Ashbery has been the most influential in opening up new possibilities for the American lyric.' Helen Vendler, New Republic, 25th February 2005. '...vintage Ashbery. The ease and the seeming casualness of the voice works in direct opposition to the complexity of the message.' - The Economist, March 2005.
Table of ContentsIgnorance of the Law Is No Excuse O Fortuna Affordable Variety Days of Reckoning Wastrel Coma Berenices The New Higher In Those Days A Visit to the House of Fools Dryness of Mouth Involuntary Description Holderlin Marginalia Told Her to Get On with It The Weather, for Example And Counting You Spoke as a Child Interesting People of Newfoundland Broken Tulips Retro Capital Annuals and Perennials Wolf Ridge When I Saw the Invidious Flare Heavy Home The Situation Upstairs Well-Lit Places Meaningful Love More Feedback Lost Footage The Red Ease Novelty Love Trot The Template From China to Peru Idea of the Forest The Injured Party A Darning Egg Wild City The Bled Wease A Below-Par Star The Snow Stained Petals Aren't Pretty Any More Tension in the Rocks Counterpane Two Million Violators Sonnet: More of Same The Love Interest Composition
