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As We Know
As We Know
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Ebook in EPUB format. Available for immediate download after we receive your order
Publisher:
Open Road Media
DRM:
Watermark
Publication Year:
2014
ISBN-13: 9781480459052
Description:
<DIV><B>Dating from one of the most studied creative periods of John Ashbery&rsquo;s career, a groundbreaking collection showcasing his signature polyphonic poem &ldquo;Litany&rdquo; </B><BR /><BR />First published in 1979, four years after Ashbery&rsquo;s masterpiece <I>Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror</I>, the poems in <I>As We Know</I> represent the great American poet writing at the peak of his experimental powers. The book&rsquo;s flagship poem, the seventy-page &ldquo;Litany,&rdquo; remains one of the most exciting and challenging of Ashbery&rsquo;s career. Presented in two facing columns, the poem asks to be read as independent but countervailing monologues, creating a dialogue of the private and the public, the human and the divine, the real and the unreal&mdash;a wild and beautiful conversation that contains multitudes.<BR />&#160;<BR /><I>As We Know</I> also collects some of Ashbery&rsquo;s most witty, self-reflexive interrogations of poetry itself, including &ldquo;Late Echo&rdquo; and &ldquo;Five Pedantic Pieces&rdquo; (&ldquo;An idea I had and talked about / Became the things I do&rdquo;), as well as a wry, laugh-out-loud call-and-response sequence of one-line poems on Ashbery&rsquo;s defining subject: the writing of poetry (&ldquo;I Had Thought Things Were Going Along Well / But I was mistaken&rdquo;). Perhaps the most admired poem in this much-discussed volume is &ldquo;Tapestry,&rdquo; a measured exploration of the inevitable distance that arises between art, audience, and artist, which the critic Harold Bloom called &ldquo;an &lsquo;Ode on a Grecian Urn&rsquo; for our time.&rdquo;<BR />&#160;<BR />Built of doubles, of echoes, of dualities and combinations, <I>As We Know</I> is the breathtaking expression of a singular American voice.<BR /></DIV>