AUTHOR: John Ashbery
READ: December
THOUGHTS: Feel like I read poems pretty frequently but rarely sit down and read 'full' poetry books so I am going to try to rectify that in the coming months or so. Been thinking of getting through some Ashbery canon, decided to start chronologically. This honestly did not do much for me. I was bracing for the incomprehensible, trying to get into a zone where I can 'soak up' that kind of stuff, but it left me dry. Aside from "The Picture of Little J.A. in a Prospect of Flowers" and maybe a few others I mostly have already forgotten all of the words in this book. I dunno. I might be a dolt, but with poetry that is largely written in abstract and un-literal/concrete language my sensibility for what makes a poem work is incredibly murky and unintelligible. I guess it becomes closer to music, more about "feeling" or something, and I wasn't feeling it. Still about three or four more Ashbery books to come, and this was his really early stuff, so maybe I will come to like all of that a lot more! I really like "How Much Longer..." and "The Skaters" and the poems I've read in "Self Portrait In A Convex Mirror" so I have a feeling I will like the later stuff better.
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