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As We Know
John Ashbery
- Description
- Excerpt
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- Reviews
'A Love Poem'
And they have to get it right. We just need
A little happiness, and when the clever things
Are taken up (O has the mouth shaped that letter?
What do we have bearing down on it?) as the last thin curve
("Positively the last," they say) before the dark:
(The sky is pure and faint, the pavement still wet) and
The dripping is in the walls, within sleep
Itself. I mean there is no escape
From me, from it. The night is itself sleep
And what goes on in it, the naming of the wind,
Our notes to each other, always repeated, always the same.
And they have to get it right. We just need
A little happiness, and when the clever things
Are taken up (O has the mouth shaped that letter?
What do we have bearing down on it?) as the last thin curve
("Positively the last," they say) before the dark:
(The sky is pure and faint, the pavement still wet) and
The dripping is in the walls, within sleep
Itself. I mean there is no escape
From me, from it. The night is itself sleep
And what goes on in it, the naming of the wind,
Our notes to each other, always repeated, always the same.
'As We Know'is John Ashbery's eighth major collection of poetry, his second from Carcanet ('Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror' was published in 1977). 'As We Know' includes forty-seven short lyrical pieces and the ambitious and rewarding long poem, 'Litany'.
'Litany'is in many ways Ashbery's most ambitious long poem, written in double columns as two independent but related monologues, meant to be seen or 'overheard' simultaneously. The attempt has been to write a polyphonic dialogue, and the effect is close to that of certain modern music, in which the instruments seem to converse and argue with one another - as in Charles Ives's Second String Quartet and much of the music of Elliott Carter.
In 'Litany', as in the shorter lyrics, Ashbery's verse continues to chart the progress of the self in search of an identity it finds reflected - sometimes in the cacophony of the modern urban world, sometimes in the solitude and silences of the spirit.
'Litany'is in many ways Ashbery's most ambitious long poem, written in double columns as two independent but related monologues, meant to be seen or 'overheard' simultaneously. The attempt has been to write a polyphonic dialogue, and the effect is close to that of certain modern music, in which the instruments seem to converse and argue with one another - as in Charles Ives's Second String Quartet and much of the music of Elliott Carter.
In 'Litany', as in the shorter lyrics, Ashbery's verse continues to chart the progress of the self in search of an identity it finds reflected - sometimes in the cacophony of the modern urban world, sometimes in the solitude and silences of the spirit.
Awards won by John Ashbery
Winner, 1997 Gold Medal for Poetry
Winner, 2001 Wallace Stevens Award
Winner, 1995 Robert Frost Medal
Winner, 1976 National Book Critics Circle Award (Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror)
Winner, 1976 National Book Award (Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror)
Winner, 1976 Pulitzer Award (Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror)
Praise for John Ashbery
'That Ashbery had these several extended works underway simultaneously testifies not only to his unflagging fealty to the form but also to his extravagantly various powers of invention and intelligence... Even as the references that undergird these projects range from the reassuringly familiar to the dauntingly obscure, as is typical with Ashbery, they characterize a rarefied mental atmosphere, one in which the poet's droll self-awareness deflates what otherwise might be pretension... Ashbery recognized the porous border between decision and delusion, between finality and its seeming appearance. This collection of unfinished works allows readers to tread that border as well.'
Albert Mobilio, Poetry
'This is an exciting missing piece of the jigsaw for Ashbery enthusiasts. Here language fizzes with a vital "off-kilter quality" and an Ashberian state of open-ended possibility.'
The Poetry Book Society Summer Bulletin
'I'll keep returning to The Wave, knowing that each time I do, I'll connect with poems, and lines in poems, I haven't noticed before and recconect with those that have resonated already'
Pam Thompson, The North
'John Ashbery's final collection of poetry disguises itself well as a mid-career high. The energy and modernity of his strange little worlds tell nothing of his age.'
Stand Magazine
'More than a century after Arthur Rimbaud composed his Illuminations they are reborn in John Ashbery's magnificent translation. It is fitting that the major American poet since Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens should give us this noble version of the precursor of all three.'
Harold Bloom
'A fine collection of poems rooted in 21st-century America.'
Robert McCrum, The Observer
'More than a century after Arthur Rimbaud composed his Illuminations they are reborn in John Ashbery's magnificent translation. It is fitting that the major American poet since Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens should give us this noble version of the precursor of all three.'
Harold Bloom
'Quick Question, with the hushed intensity of its music and great lyric beauty, could only be Ashbery.'
Ian Thomson, Financial Times The book invites the reader to poetic gluttony. It serves as a corrective to the monoglot provincialism by which the Anglophone world is still bedevilled.
Sean O'Brien, Independent 'The lyrics in Breezeway, a new collection by the octogenarian poet John Ashbery are as good as his finest. I especially like the final poem, poignantly reprising the last line of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale', "Do I wake or sleep?"'
Salley Vickers, The Observer - The New Review, 29.11.2015.
'John Ashbery's Collected Poems 1956-1987, edited by Mark Ford (Carcanet), was a book I found inexhaustible. Possibly the greatest living English-speaking poet and one of the most prolific, Ashbery takes language to its limits, so that words serve as pointers to shifting experiences that elude description. Containing his masterpiece 'Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror', one of the most penetrating 20th-century meditations on what it means to be human, this collection succeeded in stirring my thoughts as well as delighting me.'
John Gray The Guardian Books Of The Year 2010
'The careering, centrifugal side of Girls on the Run is one of its most effective tools in creating its special ainbience of good-humoured menace ... Ashbery has made the slush of signification, the realm where words slip, slide, perish and decay, uniquely his own.'
David Wheatley, Times Literary Supplement, 30 June, 2000
'In his seventies John Ashbery offers a sprightly and energetic alternative. Instead of being sluggish he demands that the self must be even more alert, more vigilant, more attentive to the world around it, not indifferent to and weary of it. Alert, vigilant, attentive ... Wakefulness, the brilliantly evocative title of Ashbery's collection.'
Stephen Matterson, 'The Capacious Art of Poetry,' Poetry Ireland Review 62, 114
'The Mooring of Starting Out is filled with illustrations glimpsed through luminous, funny, formidably intelligent and often heartbreaking poems.'
Andrew Zawacki, 'A wave of music,' Times Literary Supplement, 12 June, 1998
Albert Mobilio, Poetry
'This is an exciting missing piece of the jigsaw for Ashbery enthusiasts. Here language fizzes with a vital "off-kilter quality" and an Ashberian state of open-ended possibility.'
The Poetry Book Society Summer Bulletin
'I'll keep returning to The Wave, knowing that each time I do, I'll connect with poems, and lines in poems, I haven't noticed before and recconect with those that have resonated already'
Pam Thompson, The North
'John Ashbery's final collection of poetry disguises itself well as a mid-career high. The energy and modernity of his strange little worlds tell nothing of his age.'
Stand Magazine
'More than a century after Arthur Rimbaud composed his Illuminations they are reborn in John Ashbery's magnificent translation. It is fitting that the major American poet since Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens should give us this noble version of the precursor of all three.'
Harold Bloom
'A fine collection of poems rooted in 21st-century America.'
Robert McCrum, The Observer
'More than a century after Arthur Rimbaud composed his Illuminations they are reborn in John Ashbery's magnificent translation. It is fitting that the major American poet since Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens should give us this noble version of the precursor of all three.'
Harold Bloom
'Quick Question, with the hushed intensity of its music and great lyric beauty, could only be Ashbery.'
Ian Thomson, Financial Times The book invites the reader to poetic gluttony. It serves as a corrective to the monoglot provincialism by which the Anglophone world is still bedevilled.
Sean O'Brien, Independent 'The lyrics in Breezeway, a new collection by the octogenarian poet John Ashbery are as good as his finest. I especially like the final poem, poignantly reprising the last line of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale', "Do I wake or sleep?"'
Salley Vickers, The Observer - The New Review, 29.11.2015.
'John Ashbery's Collected Poems 1956-1987, edited by Mark Ford (Carcanet), was a book I found inexhaustible. Possibly the greatest living English-speaking poet and one of the most prolific, Ashbery takes language to its limits, so that words serve as pointers to shifting experiences that elude description. Containing his masterpiece 'Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror', one of the most penetrating 20th-century meditations on what it means to be human, this collection succeeded in stirring my thoughts as well as delighting me.'
John Gray The Guardian Books Of The Year 2010
'The careering, centrifugal side of Girls on the Run is one of its most effective tools in creating its special ainbience of good-humoured menace ... Ashbery has made the slush of signification, the realm where words slip, slide, perish and decay, uniquely his own.'
David Wheatley, Times Literary Supplement, 30 June, 2000
'In his seventies John Ashbery offers a sprightly and energetic alternative. Instead of being sluggish he demands that the self must be even more alert, more vigilant, more attentive to the world around it, not indifferent to and weary of it. Alert, vigilant, attentive ... Wakefulness, the brilliantly evocative title of Ashbery's collection.'
Stephen Matterson, 'The Capacious Art of Poetry,' Poetry Ireland Review 62, 114
'The Mooring of Starting Out is filled with illustrations glimpsed through luminous, funny, formidably intelligent and often heartbreaking poems.'
Andrew Zawacki, 'A wave of music,' Times Literary Supplement, 12 June, 1998
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