Where shall I wander New poems

Ashbery expresses a sly playfulness, a tender theatricality, a surreal sensibility, and an urbane wit. With more than 20 poetry collections to his name, this master of the humorous meditation, this maestro of scintillating streams of consciousness, this perpetuator of the Wallace Stevens' school of philosophical reflection and manicured whimsy frolics in language as though words are flowers and each page is an exotic arrangement. For Ashbery, language is both artifice and life. His new poems are especially sharp, arch, and complexly moody. Rife with allusions to literature and art, they swing teasingly between the vernacular and the rarefied as Ashbery contrasts the more gracious past with the pressing present even as he mocks nostalgia. His characters (his poems are skits, fables, journal entries, and monologues) are full of longing and ruefulness as they reveal and conceal their feelings, performing parlor tricks of the soul to assuage their bruised hearts and fear of age and death. Mercurial, elegant, funny, and magical, these mind-bending and beautifully haunting poems are the knowing work of a virtuoso. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2005 Booklist

This 23rd collection from Harold Bloom's favorite living American poet is a modestly scaled affair: it doesn't end with a grand long poem, which has become an Ashbery trademark since Rivers and Mountains, nor is it especially big like Can You Hear, Bird nor does it even contain many poems that extend more than three pages (the title poem, at seven pages, is the longest). The book as a whole takes the pleasures of games and makes of them poetic seductions; the adjective "Ashberian"Apart Joseph Cornell, part Henry James, part Close EncountersAis perhaps the only one possible to describe the work at this point: "Another's narrative supplants the crawling/ stock-market quotes. Like all good things/ life tends to go on too long.../ Rains bathe the rainbow,/ and the shape of night is an empty cylinder,/ focused at us, urging its noncompliance/ closer along the way we chose to go." Perhaps his secret is in providing us with the experience of terrible encounter in the comfort of our own poem, one that we can choose to occupy for years, even after discovering the beating heart under the floorboards. (Mar. 1) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Where Shall I Wander New Poems O Fortuna Good luck! Best wishes! The best of luck! The very best! Godspeed! God bless you! Peace be with you! May your shadow never be less! We can see through to the other side, you see. It's your problem, we know, but I can't help feeling a little envious. What if darkness became unhinged right now? Boomingly, swimmingly one remounts the current. Here is where the shade was, the suggestion of flowers, and peace, in another place. Our competition is like tools of a certain order. No one would have found them useful at first. It wasn't until a real emergency arose, that someone had the sense to recognize for what it was. All hell didn't break loose, it was like a rising psalm materializing like snow on an unseen mountain. All that was underfoot was good, but lost. Where Shall I Wander New Poems . Copyright © by John Ashbery. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Where Shall I Wander: New Poems by John Ashbery All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.