A stunning new collection of poems by the award-winning poet and author of And the Stars Were Shining explores the themes of aging, childhood memories, and fantasy. Ashbery is and has long been an astonishing poet. Several of his poems, most notably "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" and "The Double Dream of Spring," are touchstones of modern poetry; what astonishes now, as much as anything, is his great fertility as well as high quality. He has always been strongly influenced Wallace StevensDhis model for freedom from explicit meaningDand here Ashbery submits to Stevens's law that poetry "must give delight." This is one of his most pleasing collections in many years. Ashbery has mastered a tone at once melancholic and comedic, as in "What Is Written": "Dark spool,/ moving oceanward nowDwhat other fate could have been yours?/ You could have lived in a drawer/ for many years, imprisoned, a ward of the state. Now you are free/ to call the shots pretty much as they come./ Poor, bald thing." Not every reader grasps Ashbery's mixture of banal tone and language with surreal images and juxtapositions, but Ashbery is a great poet, and there are many delights in this new collection. Highly recommended.DGraham Christian, formerly with Andover-Harvard Theological Lib., Cambridge, MA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. Having committed the torqued fantasies aroused by contemplation of the mysterious work of outsider artist Henry Darger to paper in Girls on the Run (1999), the prolific Ashbery returns to his own merry-go-round imaginative world in his twentieth poetry collection. In glissading lines of surreal imagery, bits of dialogue, and dreamlike scenarios rife with synesthetic metaphor, he writes in a persona that is sometimes bossy, sometimes wistful, often raving and devil-may-care, then tender, ribald, or sly. His poetic stand-ins sidle up and buttonhole the reader, talking rapidly about candy, storms, croquet, cocktails, a glacier, sex, landscapes, and animals. His titles hint at his rambunctious inventiveness: "Frogs and Gospels," "Full Tilt," "Here We Go Looby," "Amnesia Goes to the Ball," "Lemurs and Pharisees," "A Star Belched." As wild and arbitrary as these pell-mell performances feel, they are tightly constructed, rhythmic, and sinuous, and underlying their sparkle are musings on memory, time, loss, angst, and desire. Such seemingly free-associative work can be taxing; it can feel indulgent, and so Ashbery's giddy poems will please some readers and fatigue others. Bonnie Smothers Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Amnesia Goes To The Ball And Again, March Is Almost Here Another Aardvark Autumn Basement Avenue Mozart Beverly Of Graustark (1) Bloodfits The Bobinski Brothers Brand Loyalty Caravaggio And His Followers Cinema Verite Conventional Wisdom Crossroads In The Past Crowd Conditions De Senectute A Descent Into The Maelstrom The Don's Bequest Dream Sequence (untitled) Enjoys Watching Foreign Films Fade In The File On Thelma Jordan The Fortune Cookie Crumbles Frogs And Gospels Full Tilt Get Me Rewrite The Gods Of Fairness Hang-up Call Has To Be Somewhere Heartache Here We Go Looby The History Of My Life Honored Guest How Dangerous Humble Pie If You Said You Would Come With Me Implicit Fog The Impure Industrial Collage Invasive Procedures Last Legs Lemurs And Pharisees Life Is A Dream A Linnet Lost Profile Memories Of Imperialism Merrily We Live More Hocketing Nobody Is Going Anywhere Not You Again Of The Light The Old House In The Country Onion Skin Our Leader Is Dreaming Over At The Mutts' Pale Siblings Paperwork Pastilles For The Voyage The Pearl Fishers Poem On Several Occasions A Postcard From Pontevedra Pot Luck Railroaded Rain In The Soup Redeemed Area Sacred And Profane Dances Short-term Memory Slumberer Small City Sonatine Melancolique Stanzas Before Time A Star Belched Strange Cinema Strange Occupations A Suit Terminal They Don't Just Go Away, Either This Room To Good People Who Should Be Going Somewhere Else Toy Symphony Two For The Road The Underwriters Variations On La Folia Vendanges Vintage Masquerade Vowels The Water Inspector Weekend What Is Written When Pressed Who Knows What Constitutes A Life Your Name Here -- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, in 1927 and educated at Harvard and Columbia Universities. He is Charles P. Stevenson, Jr., Professor of Language and Literature at Bard College and lives in New York City and Hudson, New York.