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
Book 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.
Where Shall I Wander
John Ashbery
10% off
Categories: 20th Century, 21st Century, American
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (80 pages)
(Pub. Apr 2005)
9781857547948
£10.99 £9.89
- Description
- Excerpt
- Author
- Contents
- Awards
- Reviews
It's really quite a thrill
When the moon rises above the hill
And you've gotten over someone
Salty and mercurial, the only person you ever loved.
from 'Retro'
When the moon rises above the hill
And you've gotten over someone
Salty and mercurial, the only person you ever loved.
from 'Retro'
John Ashbery's new collection of fifty-one poems ends with the substantial piece that gives the book its title. Composed in stanzaic prose, it is a fine specimen of his distinctive courtship mode, wooing the language with language, teasing it and teasing out of it a Protean lover that loves an equally Protean him back: a "You and I", in a wild variety of registers and postures.
Throughout Where Shall I Wander the effable and ineffable are in dialogue; time ('then' and 'now') and the stable moments of the poem are within earshot of one another, but cannot ever quite touch hands. There are ghosts and presences, some unexpected like Ali Baba, Arabia Deserta (down to the turning spit and braised goat) and Mrs Hanratty's apron; others like Hölderlin are more insistently entertained, in a poetry that fractures and reinvents syntax, cadence and our sense of beauty, this tribute informed by the terror of Hölderlin's later world in which it is impossible not to share.
Throughout Where Shall I Wander the effable and ineffable are in dialogue; time ('then' and 'now') and the stable moments of the poem are within earshot of one another, but cannot ever quite touch hands. There are ghosts and presences, some unexpected like Ali Baba, Arabia Deserta (down to the turning spit and braised goat) and Mrs Hanratty's apron; others like Hölderlin are more insistently entertained, in a poetry that fractures and reinvents syntax, cadence and our sense of beauty, this tribute informed by the terror of Hölderlin's later world in which it is impossible not to share.
Table of Contents
Ignorance of the Law Is No Excuse 1
O Fortuna 2
Affordable Variety 3
Days of Reckoning 4
Wastrel 6
Coma Berenices 7
The New Higher 12
In Those Days 13
A Visit to the House of Fools 14
Dryness of Mouth 15
Involuntary Description 16
Hölderlin Marginalia 17
Told Her to Get On with It 23
The Weather, for Example 24
And Counting 26
You Spoke as a Child 27
Interesting People of Newfoundland 28
Broken Tulips 30
Retro 31
Capital O 33
Annuals and Perennials 35
Wolf Ridge 36
When I Saw the Invidious Flare 37
Heavy Home 39
The Situation Upstairs 41
¬Well-¬Lit Places 43
Meaningful Love 44
More Feedback 46
Lost Footage 47
The Red Easel 49
Novelty Love Trot 50
The Template 52
From China to Peru 53
Idea of the Forest 55
The Injured Party 56
A Darning Egg 57
Wild City 58
The Bled Weasel 60
A Below Par Star 61
The Snow Stained Petals Aren't Pretty Any More 62
Tension in the Rocks 64
Counterpane 65
Two Million Violators 67
Sonnet: More of Same 68
The Love Interest 69
Composition 70
Ignorance of the Law Is No Excuse 1
O Fortuna 2
Affordable Variety 3
Days of Reckoning 4
Wastrel 6
Coma Berenices 7
The New Higher 12
In Those Days 13
A Visit to the House of Fools 14
Dryness of Mouth 15
Involuntary Description 16
Hölderlin Marginalia 17
Told Her to Get On with It 23
The Weather, for Example 24
And Counting 26
You Spoke as a Child 27
Interesting People of Newfoundland 28
Broken Tulips 30
Retro 31
Capital O 33
Annuals and Perennials 35
Wolf Ridge 36
When I Saw the Invidious Flare 37
Heavy Home 39
The Situation Upstairs 41
¬Well-¬Lit Places 43
Meaningful Love 44
More Feedback 46
Lost Footage 47
The Red Easel 49
Novelty Love Trot 50
The Template 52
From China to Peru 53
Idea of the Forest 55
The Injured Party 56
A Darning Egg 57
Wild City 58
The Bled Weasel 60
A Below Par Star 61
The Snow Stained Petals Aren't Pretty Any More 62
Tension in the Rocks 64
Counterpane 65
Two Million Violators 67
Sonnet: More of Same 68
The Love Interest 69
Composition 70
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)
'A fine collection of poems rooted in 21st-century America.'
Robert McCrum, The Observer
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
'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
Robert McCrum, The Observer
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
'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
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.
This website ©2000-2024 Carcanet Press Ltd