Hotel Lautreamont By John Ashbery,
Critics, scholars, students, and other readers of contemporary poetry have long appreciated Ashbery s uncanny mastery of the cadence and lyricism of colloquial speech, but they have been less sensitive to the equally important influences in his work of such outsider French poets as Arthur Rimbaud, Raymond Roussel, and Isidore Ducasse a k a Count de Lautreamont These sCritics, scholars, students, and other readers of contemporary poetry have long appreciated Ashbery s uncanny mastery of the cadence and lyricism of colloquial speech, but they have been less sensitive to the equally important influences in his work of such outsider French poets as Arthur Rimbaud, Raymond Roussel, and Isidore Ducasse a k a Count de Lautreamont These sometimes overlooked presences are wonderfully alive in this collection of lyric poems, which first appeared in 1992 Now back in print, Hotel Lautreamont underscores Ashbery s ability to be both tragic and playful, dense and volatile, passionate and impersonal As David Herd observed in New Statesman and Society, this is a poetry fully and startlingly engaged with the way things happen.
One of Ashbery s very best Plenty of hilarity and thwarted or provisional transcendence Baked Alaska is a particular favorite, but there are plenty of others For me it belongs on all three shelves at once read, to read, currently reading.
Here is another great poet that I don t understand Jackson Pollock was good for about two years, but can you imagine him with a 50 year career Maybe I should go to college, or Paris, or Hell.
i can come back to this again and again and always find something new.
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