Carcanet Press - Planisphere

Description
Excerpt
Author
Contents
Reviews

Tell me another dream. The long events surface
wider, further apart, like autumn breakers.
Birds are suddenly there. The house of cards
on sand falters, fatally. I am elated.
You never know how things work out
except through “sleight” of hand, sometimes.

from ‘Summer Reading’

Even after half a century of amazing readers, John Ashbery continues to delight and challenge with his inventiveness. Planisphere takes the reader on a dizzying journey in the company of a virtuoso and sorcerer who makes the commonplace magical, disorientates and teases, and conjures glimpses of ‘horizons…bright and anxious’: ‘a space like a dream’. Planisphere restores to us a sense of joy and unease at the untried possibilities of language and of the world we take for granted.

Cover image © Quemadura. Cover design StephenRaw.com

Contents:

Alcove
Attabled with the spinning years
B——'s mysterious greeting
Boulevard exelmans in the rain
Boundary issues
Breathlike
The Burning candle
Chair rental
Circa
Decembrists
Deep surprise
Default mode
El Dorado
Episode
Episode
Experiment perilous
Floating away
For Fuck's sake
The foreseeable future
Fx
Giraffe headquarters
A goose walks along a path
The gracious silhouette of ...What?
Half--riders
Happy as the sun
He who loves and runs away
I didn't know what time it was
Idea of Steve
In a wonderful place
In one afternoon
Is it just me or
Just how cloudy everything gets
The later me
Leave the hand in
Living in a big way
The logistics
Longing of the accords
Lost sonnet
Magnetic flowers
More of what happened
No extras
No reason not to
No rest for the weary
Not my favorite shirt
O Knave
Occurrence
The old jurisdiction
Partial clearing
A penitence
Pernilla
Perplexing ways
The person of whom you speak
Planisphere
The Plywood years
Poem
Product placement
Programmer
Ragtime Cowboy Joe
Rego park
River of the Canoefish
The salve merchant
Semi--detached
The seventh Chihuahua
Sleepingly
Some had lunch
Some silly thing
Something it wasn't
Songs without words
Sons of the desert
Spooks run wild
Sticker shock
Street dust
Stress related
Structures in sand
The stumming
Summer reading
Surprising announcement
Tessera
Then there was the occasional abasement
They knew what they wanted
This incredible tapestry
This listener
Tous les regretz
The Tower of London
Trespassing
Um
Unchiseled
Upstate dancers
Uptick
Variation in the key of c
The virgin king
Voice--over
The winemakers
Working overtime
World's largest glass of water
Wulf
You haven't received the letters yet?
Zero percentage
Zymurgy

John Ashbery is the author of more than twenty books of poetry, most recently Quick Question (January 2013). He is the recipient of many honours, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and a MacArthur ‘genius’ award. Born in Rochester, New York, he was educated at Harvard and Columbia. In ... read more

Praise for John Ashbery 'Praised as a magical genius, cursed as an obscure joker, John Ashbery writes poetry like no one else.' The Independent 'Great poetry, as T.S. Eliot said, can communicate before it is understood: Ashbery communicates in a way that both pays homage to language and transcends it at the same time.' The Guardian '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 language of [John Ashbery's] books is informed by his roving enthusiasms for particular composers. His tastes are both eclectic and out-of-the-way.'- Michael Glover, 'A blue rinse for the language,' The Independent, 13 November, 1999 '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 'Harold Bloom regards [John Ashbery] as something akin to a genius...' - Michael Glover, 'The poet as frustrated composer,' Book and Poetry Review section, The Independent, 14 August, 1998 '...Ashbery is still exuberantly dedicated to the truthful rendering of experience as a flow of sensations that defy interpretation. Consciousness is not so much a stream as a series of jump-cuts from one haunting or zany impression to the next. His best poems have a weirdly, intriguingly satisfying quality.' - Alan Brownjohn, 'Creating a sensation,' Book and Poetry Review section, The Sunday Times, 10 January, 1999

'Stemming in part from Mallarme and in part from Whitman, Ashbery's work creates a tension in which the fine networks of linguistic reverie are balanced by the strong sense of American tradition.'- Peter Ackroyd, 'Books of the Year,' The Times Literary Supplement, 4 December, 1992 '...an Ashbery [poem] does not stand on its own but floats off into the reader's limitless consciousness like a balloon. Balloons can be very beautiful, inspire longing and also make you smile.'- Grey Gowrie, 'Where the commonplace is wonderful,' Book and Poetry Review section, The Daily Telegraph, 5 October, 1996 'John Ashbery's distinctiveness as a poet paradoxically resides in his ability to evade all single identities; like Whitman, he feels most fully himself when he contains multitudes ... [Ashbery] deploys a staggering variety of dictions, ranging from fragments of novelettish narratives to lyrical dream-visions, from the cliché of public speech to scraps of surrealist collage...'- Mark Ford, 'Free-wheeling towards the abyss,' Times Literary Supplement, 27 December, 1991 'Notoriously hard to characterise, Ashbery's poetry has been likened to many things - a spiritual experience or an animated cartoon ... No poet's lines are more accommodating to other voices and idioms ... Like restless guests, his subjects arrive and mingle, don unlikely disguises and abruptly announce they are "off on some expedition"...Such poise lends authority to his "positive melancholy," makes even his excesses ... masterly, and ensures that The Ashbery remains the destination of choice, the place "where everything gets unravelled just right."'- Julian Loose, Book and Poetry Review section, The Guardian, 3 November, 1992 '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 'John Ashbery is probably the most highly regarded living poet in America ... The "story" element in Ashbery comes over in fragmented and non-consequential ways, but the fragments have a strong power of visual evocation, and a startling precision of outline ... His focus is on a bravura artifice, a depersonalised surface crackling with "possibility," a brilliant randomness in which analogy with Action Painting asserts itself with special force...'- Claude Rawson, 'A poet in the postmodern playground,' Times Literary Supplement, 4 July, 1986

It is now fifty-four years since John Ashbery's first collection Some Trees , appeared, and thirty-five since his most celebrated volume, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror . In recent years he has been canonized by the Library of America ( Collected Poems 1956-1978, with a second volume to come), while remaining a highly productive poet well into his ninth decade. read more

It's been two years since the last one, so it must be time for a new book of poems by John Ashbery. read more

John Ashbery's work has amused, amazed, outraged and appalled, delighted and divided readers of poetry for over fifty years. read more

It's been two years since the last one, so it must be time for a new book of poems by John Ashbery. read more

John Ashbery's work has amused, amazed, outraged and appalled, delighted and divided readers of poetry for over fifty years. read more

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Planisphere John Ashbery RRP: GBP£ 12.95 Discount: 10% You Save: GBP£ 1.29 Price: GBP£ 11.65 Available Paperback ISBN: 978 1 847770 89 9 Categories: 21st Century, American Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Published: December 2009 216 x 135 mm 160 pages Publisher: Carcanet Press Description Excerpt Author Contents Reviews Tell me another dream. The long events surface wider, further apart, like autumn breakers. Birds are suddenly there. The house of cards on sand falters, fatally. I am elated. You never know how things work out except through “sleight” of hand, sometimes. from ‘Summer Reading’ Even after half a century of amazing readers, John Ashbery continues to delight and challenge with his inventiveness. Planisphere takes the reader on a dizzying journey in the company of a virtuoso and sorcerer who makes the commonplace magical, disorientates and teases, and conjures glimpses of ‘horizons…bright and anxious’: ‘a space like a dream’. Planisphere restores to us a sense of joy and unease at the untried possibilities of language and of the world we take for granted. Cover image © Quemadura. Cover design StephenRaw.com Contents: Alcove Attabled with the spinning years B——'s mysterious greeting Boulevard exelmans in the rain Boundary issues Breathlike The Burning candle Chair rental Circa Decembrists Deep surprise Default mode El Dorado Episode Episode Experiment perilous Floating away For Fuck's sake The foreseeable future Fx Giraffe headquarters A goose walks along a path The gracious silhouette of ...What? Half--riders Happy as the sun He who loves and runs away I didn't know what time it was Idea of Steve In a wonderful place In one afternoon Is it just me or Just how cloudy everything gets The later me Leave the hand in Living in a big way The logistics Longing of the accords Lost sonnet Magnetic flowers More of what happened No extras No reason not to No rest for the weary Not my favorite shirt O Knave Occurrence The old jurisdiction Partial clearing A penitence Pernilla Perplexing ways The person of whom you speak Planisphere The Plywood years Poem Product placement Programmer Ragtime Cowboy Joe Rego park River of the Canoefish The salve merchant Semi--detached The seventh Chihuahua Sleepingly Some had lunch Some silly thing Something it wasn't Songs without words Sons of the desert Spooks run wild Sticker shock Street dust Stress related Structures in sand The stumming Summer reading Surprising announcement Tessera Then there was the occasional abasement They knew what they wanted This incredible tapestry This listener Tous les regretz The Tower of London Trespassing Um Unchiseled Upstate dancers Uptick Variation in the key of c The virgin king Voice--over The winemakers Working overtime World's largest glass of water Wulf You haven't received the letters yet? Zero percentage Zymurgy John Ashbery is the author of more than twenty books of poetry, most recently Quick Question (January 2013). He is the recipient of many honours, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and a MacArthur ‘genius’ award. Born in Rochester, New York, he was educated at Harvard and Columbia. In ... read more Praise for John Ashbery 'Praised as a magical genius, cursed as an obscure joker, John Ashbery writes poetry like no one else.' The Independent 'Great poetry, as T.S. Eliot said, can communicate before it is understood: Ashbery communicates in a way that both pays homage to language and transcends it at the same time.' The Guardian '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 language of [John Ashbery's] books is informed by his roving enthusiasms for particular composers. His tastes are both eclectic and out-of-the-way.'- *Michael Glover, 'A blue rinse for the language,' The Independent, 13 November, 1999* '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** 'Harold Bloom regards [John Ashbery] as something akin to a genius...' - *Michael Glover, 'The poet as frustrated composer,' Book and Poetry Review section, The Independent, 14 August, 1998* '...Ashbery is still exuberantly dedicated to the truthful rendering of experience as a flow of sensations that defy interpretation. Consciousness is not so much a stream as a series of jump-cuts from one haunting or zany impression to the next. His best poems have a weirdly, intriguingly satisfying quality.' - *Alan Brownjohn, 'Creating a sensation,' Book and Poetry Review section, The Sunday Times, 10 January, 1999* 'Stemming in part from Mallarme and in part from Whitman, Ashbery's work creates a tension in which the fine networks of linguistic reverie are balanced by the strong sense of American tradition.'- *Peter Ackroyd, 'Books of the Year,' The Times Literary Supplement, 4 December, 1992* '...an Ashbery [poem] does not stand on its own but floats off into the reader's limitless consciousness like a balloon. Balloons can be very beautiful, inspire longing and also make you smile.'*- Grey Gowrie, 'Where the commonplace is wonderful,' Book and Poetry Review section, The Daily Telegraph, 5 October, 1996* 'John Ashbery's distinctiveness as a poet paradoxically resides in his ability to evade all single identities; like Whitman, he feels most fully himself when he contains multitudes ... [Ashbery] deploys a staggering variety of dictions, ranging from fragments of novelettish narratives to lyrical dream-visions, from the cliché of public speech to scraps of surrealist collage...'*- Mark Ford, 'Free-wheeling towards the abyss,' Times Literary Supplement, 27 December, 1991* 'Notoriously hard to characterise, Ashbery's poetry has been likened to many things - a spiritual experience or an animated cartoon ... No poet's lines are more accommodating to other voices and idioms ... Like restless guests, his subjects arrive and mingle, don unlikely disguises and abruptly announce they are "off on some expedition"...Such poise lends authority to his "positive melancholy," makes even his excesses ... masterly, and ensures that The Ashbery remains the destination of choice, the place "where everything gets unravelled just right."'*- Julian Loose, Book and Poetry Review section, The Guardian, 3 November, 1992* '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* 'John Ashbery is probably the most highly regarded living poet in America ... The "story" element in Ashbery comes over in fragmented and non-consequential ways, but the fragments have a strong power of visual evocation, and a startling precision of outline ... His focus is on a bravura artifice, a depersonalised surface crackling with "possibility," a brilliant randomness in which analogy with Action Painting asserts itself with special force...'*- Claude Rawson, 'A poet in the postmodern playground,' Times Literary Supplement, 4 July, 1986* It is now fifty-four years since John Ashbery's first collection Some Trees , appeared, and thirty-five since his most celebrated volume, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror . In recent years he has been canonized by the Library of America ( Collected Poems 1956-1978, with a second volume to come), while remaining a highly productive poet well into his ninth decade. read more It's been two years since the last one, so it must be time for a new book of poems by John Ashbery. read more John Ashbery's work has amused, amazed, outraged and appalled, delighted and divided readers of poetry for over fifty years. read more It is now fifty-four years since John Ashbery's first collection Some Trees , appeared, and thirty-five since his most celebrated volume, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror . In recent years he has been canonized by the Library of America ( Collected Poems 1956-1978, with a second volume to come), while remaining a highly productive poet well into his ninth decade. read more It's been two years since the last one, so it must be time for a new book of poems by John Ashbery. read more John Ashbery's work has amused, amazed, outraged and appalled, delighted and divided readers of poetry for over fifty years. read more You might also be interested in: Odd Blocks Kay Ryan Overlord Jorie Graham	Share this... 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