Bücher von John Ashbery

An essential, vibrant collection of masterful translations by one of the finest poets at work today Collected French Translations: Prose, the second volume in a landmark two-volume selection of John Ashbery's translations, focuses on prose writing. Ashbery's own prose writings and engagement with prose writers-through translations, essays, and criticism-have had a profound impact on the cultural landscape of the past half century. This book presents his versions of, among others, the classic French fairy tale "The White Cat" by Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy, as well as works by such innovative masters as Raymond Roussel and Giorgio de Chirico. Here are all of Roussel's Documents to Serve as an Outline and extracts from his Impressions of Africa; selections from Georges Bataille's darkly erotic first novella, L'abbé C; Antonin Artaud's correspondence with the writer Jacques Rivière; Salvador Dalí on Willem de Kooning's art; Jacques Dupin on Giacometti; and key theoretical and conceptual texts by Odilon Redon, Jean Hélion, Iannis Xenakis, and Marcelin Pleynet. Several of these twenty-nine prose pieces, by seventeen fiction writers, playwrights, artists, musicians, and critics, are previously unpublished or have been long unavailable. Many are modern classics, such as Pierre Reverdy's Haunted House. This book provides fresh insight into the range of French cultural influence on Ashbery's life and work in literature and the arts.

BreathlikeJust as the day could use another hour,I need another idea. Not a conceptor a slogan. Something more like a rutmade thousands of years ago by one of the firstwheels as it rolled along. It never came backto see what it had done, and the rutjust stayed there, not thinking of itselfor calling attention to itself in any way.Sun baked it. Water stood, or rather satin it. Wind covered it with dust, then blew itaway. Always it was available to itselfwhen it wished to be, which wasn't often.Then there was a cup and ball theoryI told you about. A lot of people had left the coast.Squirt conditions obtained. I forgot I overwhelmed youonce upon a time, between everybody's sound sleepand waking afterward, trying to piece togetherwhat had happened. The rut glimmeredthrough centuries of snow and after.I suppose it was trying to make some pointbut we never found out about that,having come to know each other years laterwhen our interest in zoning had revived again.

Thrill of a RomanceIt's different when you have hiccups.Everything is--so many glad hands competingfor your attention, a scarf, a puff of soot,or just a blast of silence from a radio.What is it? That's for you to learnto your dismay when, at the end of a long queuein the cafeteria, tray in hand, they tell you the gate closed downafter the Second World War. Syracuse was declared capitalof a nation in malaise, but the directoratehad other, hidden goals. To proclaim logica casualty of truth was one.Everyone's solitude (and resulting promiscuity)perfumed the byways of villages we had thought civilized.I saw you waiting for a streetcar and pressed forward.Alas, you were only a child in armor. Now when ribald toastssail round a table too fair laid out, why the consequencesare only dust, disease and old age. Pleasant memoriesare just that. So I channel whateverinto my contingency, a vein of mercurythat keeps breaking out, higher up, more on timeevery time. Dirndls spotted with obsolete flowers,worn in the city again, promote open discussion.

Selections from the first three decades of the poetry of John Ashbery, author of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book AwardThe late John Ashbery was a poet whose "teasing, delicate, soulful lines made him one of the most influential figures of late-20th and early 21st century American literature." (The New York Times) This important volume gathers work from his first ten collections of poetry, from Some Trees, which was chosen by W.H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Series (1956), to A Wave (1984). The 138 poems in this volume include short lyrics, haikus, prose poems, and many of Ashbery's major long poems, including "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," offering a beautiful distillation of the first thirty years of his remarkable, groundbreaking work.

For over 50 years John Ashbery has been one of America's most innovative and influential poets. Like Yeats and Milosz, Ashbery is that rare poet whose work continues to improve as he ages. Now at 85, he writes with the boldness and vision of a poet half his age. Honed by experience and inexhaustibly creative, these never before published poems certify that Ashbery's artistic flame has continued to burn late into his life.

A bilingual (English and French) poetry anthology with works by 38 American poets in honor of Whitman's Leaves of Grass for its 150th anniversary. The poets include John Ashbery, Bill Berkson, Charles Bernstein, Robert Creeley, Mark Ford, Peter Gizzi, Jorie Graham, David Trinidad, and Anne Waldman.