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Quick QuestionJohn Ashbery
Categories: 21st Century, American, LGBTQ+
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (128 pages) (Pub. Jan 2013) 9781847772282 Out of Stock
In Quick Question John Ashbery extends an invitation to readers to accompany him into the extraordinary worlds of the everyday, experienced through the box of tricks that is language. He revels in twist and transformation, the constant mutability of words and things: ‘Whatever stops playing is the enemy of the incomplete’. He can stop us in our tracks with the accuracy of his perception: ‘Somewhere in America someone is trying to figure out / how to pay for this’. Aware of the paradoxes of his own writing, he teases us with questions: ‘Is it all doggerel and folderol?’ ‘Would I lie to you?’ Either way, his invitation is irresistible: come in, see what happens.
WORDS TO THAT EFFECT
QUICK QUESTION THE SHORT ANSWER CROSS ISLAND THE ALLEGATIONS REST AREA RECENT HISTORY A VOICE FROM THE FIREPLACE IN DREAMS I KISS YOUR HAND, MADAME THE NEW CROWD IN A LONELY PLACE MORE RELUCTANT UNLIKE THE CAMELOPARD RESISTING ARREST WHO WERE THOSE PEOPLE DOUBLE WHOOPEE LIKE ANY LEAVES THE COST OF SLEEP ABSENT AGENDA UNFIT TO STAND TRIAL HOW I MET YOU LAUGHING CREEK THE QUEEN’ S APRON HOMELESS HEART GILDERSLEEVE ON BROADWAY AUBURN-TINTED FENCES THIS ECONOMY FALSE REPORT NORTHEAST BUILDING ELECTIVE INIFNITIES SUBURBAN BURMA ETUDES SECOND SERIES PUFF PIECE SAPS AT SEA TANGO AND SCHOTTISCHE THE FOP'S TALE A MODERN INSTANCE BELLS II FEEL FREE FAR HARBOR THE BICAMERAL EYEBALL POEM BEGINNING WITH A LINE FROM GAMMER GURTON'S NEEDLE NOT BEYOND ALL CONJECTURE INSTEAD OF LOSING LAUNDRY LIST PALMY YOU WHAT? SILENT AUCTION CARD OF THANKS MARI VAUDAGE MARINE SHADOW "BEYOND ALBANY AND SYRACUSE..." NEVER TWO WITHOUT THREE MABUSE'S AFTERNOON THE RETURN OF FRANK JAMES FIVE O’CLOCK SHADOW THE FUTURE OF THE DANCE WITHAL IPHIGENIA IN SODUS BACON GRABBERS VIEWERS WILL RECALL POSTLUDE AND PREQUEL [UNTITLED: "CAN WE START AGAIN?"]
Awards won by John Ashbery
Winner, 1997 Gold Medal for Poetry
Winner, 2001 Wallace Stevens Award
Winner, 1995 Robert Frost Medal
Winner, 1976 National Book Critics Circle Award (Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror)
Winner, 1976 National Book Award (Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror)
Winner, 1976 Pulitzer Award (Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror)
'Quick Question, with the hushed intensity of its music and great lyric beauty, could only be Ashbery.'
Ian Thomson, Financial Times Praise for John Ashbery 'That Ashbery had these several extended works underway simultaneously testifies not only to his unflagging fealty to the form but also to his extravagantly various powers of invention and intelligence... Even as the references that undergird these projects range from the reassuringly familiar to the dauntingly obscure, as is typical with Ashbery, they characterize a rarefied mental atmosphere, one in which the poet's droll self-awareness deflates what otherwise might be pretension... Ashbery recognized the porous border between decision and delusion, between finality and its seeming appearance. This collection of unfinished works allows readers to tread that border as well.' Albert Mobilio, Poetry 'This is an exciting missing piece of the jigsaw for Ashbery enthusiasts. Here language fizzes with a vital "off-kilter quality" and an Ashberian state of open-ended possibility.' The Poetry Book Society Summer Bulletin 'I'll keep returning to The Wave, knowing that each time I do, I'll connect with poems, and lines in poems, I haven't noticed before and recconect with those that have resonated already' Pam Thompson, The North 'John Ashbery's final collection of poetry disguises itself well as a mid-career high. The energy and modernity of his strange little worlds tell nothing of his age.' Stand Magazine 'More than a century after Arthur Rimbaud composed his Illuminations they are reborn in John Ashbery's magnificent translation. It is fitting that the major American poet since Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens should give us this noble version of the precursor of all three.' Harold Bloom 'A fine collection of poems rooted in 21st-century America.' Robert McCrum, The Observer 'More than a century after Arthur Rimbaud composed his Illuminations they are reborn in John Ashbery's magnificent translation. It is fitting that the major American poet since Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens should give us this noble version of the precursor of all three.' Harold Bloom The book invites the reader to poetic gluttony. It serves as a corrective to the monoglot provincialism by which the Anglophone world is still bedevilled. Sean O'Brien, Independent 'The lyrics in Breezeway, a new collection by the octogenarian poet John Ashbery are as good as his finest. I especially like the final poem, poignantly reprising the last line of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale', "Do I wake or sleep?"' Salley Vickers, The Observer - The New Review, 29.11.2015. '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 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 '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
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