Carcanet Press - Planisphere

Description
Excerpt
Author
Contents
Awards
Reviews

Tell me another dream. The long events surface
wider, further apart, like autumn breakers.
Birds are suddenly there. The house of cards
on sand falters, fatally. I am elated.
You never know how things work out
except through “sleight” of hand, sometimes.

from ‘Summer Reading’

Even after half a century of amazing readers, John Ashbery continues to delight and challenge with his inventiveness. Planisphere takes the reader on a dizzying journey in the company of a virtuoso and sorcerer who makes the commonplace magical, disorientates and teases, and conjures glimpses of ‘horizons… bright and anxious’: ‘a space like a dream’. Planisphere restores to us a sense of joy and unease at the untried possibilities of language and of the world we take for granted.

Cover image © Quemadura. Cover design StephenRaw.com

Contents:

Alcove
Attabled with the spinning years
B——'s mysterious greeting
Boulevard exelmans in the rain
Boundary issues
Breathlike
The Burning candle
Chair rental
Circa
Decembrists
Deep surprise
Default mode
El Dorado
Episode
Episode
Experiment perilous
Floating away
For Fuck's sake
The foreseeable future
Fx
Giraffe headquarters
A goose walks along a path
The gracious silhouette of ...What?
Half--riders
Happy as the sun
He who loves and runs away
I didn't know what time it was
Idea of Steve
In a wonderful place
In one afternoon
Is it just me or
Just how cloudy everything gets
The later me
Leave the hand in
Living in a big way
The logistics
Longing of the accords
Lost sonnet
Magnetic flowers
More of what happened
No extras
No reason not to
No rest for the weary
Not my favorite shirt
O Knave
Occurrence
The old jurisdiction
Partial clearing
A penitence
Pernilla
Perplexing ways
The person of whom you speak
Planisphere
The Plywood years
Poem
Product placement
Programmer
Ragtime Cowboy Joe
Rego park
River of the Canoefish
The salve merchant
Semi--detached
The seventh Chihuahua
Sleepingly
Some had lunch
Some silly thing
Something it wasn't
Songs without words
Sons of the desert
Spooks run wild
Sticker shock
Street dust
Stress related
Structures in sand
The stumming
Summer reading
Surprising announcement
Tessera
Then there was the occasional abasement
They knew what they wanted
This incredible tapestry
This listener
Tous les regretz
The Tower of London
Trespassing
Um
Unchiseled
Upstate dancers
Uptick
Variation in the key of c
The virgin king
Voice--over
The winemakers
Working overtime
World's largest glass of water
Wulf
You haven't received the letters yet?
Zero percentage
Zymurgy

John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, in 1927. His books of poetry include Breezeway ; Quick Question ; Planisphere ; Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems, which was awarded the 2008 International Griffin Poetry Prize; A Worldly Country ; Where Shall I Wander ; and Self-Portrait in ... read more

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

Quote of the Day Devotedly, unostentatiously, Carcanet has evolved into a poetry publisher whose independence of mind and largeness of heart have made everyone who cares about literature feel increasingly admiring and grateful. Andrew Motion Home Events Authors Titles Paperback Hardback Limited Edition Journal CD eBook Audiobook Exact Editions Imprints Anvil Press Poetry Aspects of Portugal Carcanet Classics Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Carcanet Poetry Fyfield Books Little Island Press Lives and Letters Northern House OxfordPoets PN Review Information About Us PN Review Turns 50 Years Old! Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years! Academic Enquiries Authors for Events Catalogue Contact Us Copyright and Permissions Join Our Mailing List Opportunities at Carcanet Press Enquiries PN Review PN Review Creative Writing Prize Returns Policy Shopping Guide Stocklist Submission Guidelines Trade Information Resources Audio Gallery Reading Group Guides Video
Book Search Search > advanced search Subscribe to our mailing list
Order by 16th December to receive books in time for Christmas. Please bear in mind that all orders may be subject to postal delays that are beyond our control.
Planisphere John Ashbery Categories: 21st Century, American, LGBTQ+ Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (160 pages) (Pub. Dec 2009) 9781847770899 Out of Stock Description Excerpt Author Contents Awards Reviews Tell me another dream. The long events surface wider, further apart, like autumn breakers. Birds are suddenly there. The house of cards on sand falters, fatally. I am elated. You never know how things work out except through “sleight” of hand, sometimes. from ‘Summer Reading’ Even after half a century of amazing readers, John Ashbery continues to delight and challenge with his inventiveness. Planisphere takes the reader on a dizzying journey in the company of a virtuoso and sorcerer who makes the commonplace magical, disorientates and teases, and conjures glimpses of ‘horizons… bright and anxious’: ‘a space like a dream’. Planisphere restores to us a sense of joy and unease at the untried possibilities of language and of the world we take for granted. Cover image © Quemadura. Cover design StephenRaw.com Contents: Alcove Attabled with the spinning years B——'s mysterious greeting Boulevard exelmans in the rain Boundary issues Breathlike The Burning candle Chair rental Circa Decembrists Deep surprise Default mode El Dorado Episode Episode Experiment perilous Floating away For Fuck's sake The foreseeable future Fx Giraffe headquarters A goose walks along a path The gracious silhouette of ...What? Half--riders Happy as the sun He who loves and runs away I didn't know what time it was Idea of Steve In a wonderful place In one afternoon Is it just me or Just how cloudy everything gets The later me Leave the hand in Living in a big way The logistics Longing of the accords Lost sonnet Magnetic flowers More of what happened No extras No reason not to No rest for the weary Not my favorite shirt O Knave Occurrence The old jurisdiction Partial clearing A penitence Pernilla Perplexing ways The person of whom you speak Planisphere The Plywood years Poem Product placement Programmer Ragtime Cowboy Joe Rego park River of the Canoefish The salve merchant Semi--detached The seventh Chihuahua Sleepingly Some had lunch Some silly thing Something it wasn't Songs without words Sons of the desert Spooks run wild Sticker shock Street dust Stress related Structures in sand The stumming Summer reading Surprising announcement Tessera Then there was the occasional abasement They knew what they wanted This incredible tapestry This listener Tous les regretz The Tower of London Trespassing Um Unchiseled Upstate dancers Uptick Variation in the key of c The virgin king Voice--over The winemakers Working overtime World's largest glass of water Wulf You haven't received the letters yet? Zero percentage Zymurgy John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, in 1927. His books of poetry include Breezeway ; Quick Question ; Planisphere ; Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems, which was awarded the 2008 International Griffin Poetry Prize; A Worldly Country ; Where Shall I Wander ; and Self-Portrait in ... read more 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 You might also be interested in: Odd Blocks Kay Ryan Overlord Jorie Graham	Share this... Quick Links Carcanet Poetry Carcanet Classics Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Lives and Letters PN Review Video Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years! The Carcanet Blog One Little Room: Peter McDonald read more Collected Poems: Mimi Khalvati read more Invisible Dog: Fabio Morbito, translated by Richard Gwyn read more Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry read more Billy 'Nibs' Buckshot: John Gallas read more Emotional Support Horse: Claudine Toutoungi read more
We thank the Arts Council England for their support and assistance in this interactive Project.
Privacy Statement Sitemap RSS Feeds Home Events Authors Titles Imprints Information Resources This website ©2000-2024 Carcanet Press Ltd