Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror PDF
Preview Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
/ Ashbery 1849339 Self-portrait in a convex mirror SXOHAGH As3se 811 Ashbery 1849339 Self-portrait in a convex mirror STORAGB 5^ -*- CO a PUBLIC LIBRARY FORT WAYNE AND ALl£N COUNTY, V w ALLENCOUNTYPUBLICLIBRARY 3 1833 00161 1810 Critics welcomed John Ashbery's last book, Three Poems, as "one of the dozen orsogenuinelyimportantbooksofpoetry published in America in the past fifty years,""oftherareorderofmasterpieces," "a magisterial achievement" that marked a significant progression in a major writer's career. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror is also an epoch-making book. Not only in the title poem, which the critic John Russell has called "one of the finest long poems of our period," but in the entire collec- tion of thirty-six poems, Mr. Ashbery re- affirms the extraordinary range of powers that makes him such a central figure in the American literary landscape. "One comes to know him through [his] poems," The New York Times has writ- ten, "evocations of a richly populated inner life that reveal a wholly original awareness of all the disguises that reality takes." Convex Mirror Self-Portrait in a m% ' "This beautiful book is equal or superior to Ashbery's previous masterwork, The DoubleDream ofSpring Not even in that collection did Ashbery maintain so continuous a level of what I am com- pelled to judge as poetic greatness. The difficulties that this new book presents are the legitimate difficulties of major poetry—depth of complex emotion, in- dividuality of sensibility and of vision, and the powerof the mind over language and the universe of death. No one now writing poems in the English language is likelier than Ashbery to survive the se- vere judgments of time. ... He is joining that American sequence that includes Whitman, Dickinson, Stevens, and Hart Crane. The book will be a major part of our imaginative history, and is an inevit- able comfort in our current darkness." —Harold Bloom "John Ashbery's new book continues his astonishing explorations of places where noonehaseverbeen; itis, again, anevent in American poetry." —DonaldBarthelme "These new poems are major odes to the joy of imagining, to the mitigation of sameness. They have a clarity akin to radiance. In their exciting oscillations— between image and act, art and life— what lingers on, after their startlingness, is their truth. This is some of the most seriouswritingin,andof,America today." —John Hollander Also by John Ashbery POETRY Turandot and Other Poems Some Trees The Tennis Court Oath Rivers and Mountains Selected Poems The Double Dream of Spring Three Poems fiction withJames Schuyler A Nest of Ninnies Self-Portrait a in Convex Mirror Poems by John Ashbery THE VIKING PRESS New York Copyright e 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975 byJohn Ashbery All rights reserved First published in 1975 by The Viking Press, Inc. 625 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022 Published simultaneously in Canada by The Macmillan Company ofCanada Limited "VoyageintheBlue,""FearofDeath,""CityAfternoon.""WorseningSituation"origi- nally appeared in The New Yorker. "Scheherazade," "As You Came from the Holy- Land,""AManofWords,""GrandGalop,"'Self-PortraitinaConvexMirror"originally appeared inPoetry. Other poems have appeared inAmericanPoetryReview, AmericanReview, TheNew York Review ofBooks, and in various little magazines. LibraryofCongress Catalogingin Publication Data Ashbery,John. Self-portrait in a convex mirror. I. Title. PS3501.S475S4 813'.5'4 75-1095 ISBN 0-670-63283-X Printed in U.S.A. /wishtothanktheGuggenhaim Foundationfora grant which was ofgreat helpin writingthis book. -f.A.
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