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60th out of 975 books
—
1,010 voters
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
by
John Ashbery (Goodreads Author)
John Ashberry won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Ashberry reaffirms the poetic powers that have made him such an outstanding figure in contemporary literature. This new book continues his astonishing explorations of places where no one has ever been.
Paperback, 96 pages
Published
January 1st 1990
by Penguin Books
(first published October 28th 1976)
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Well, I mean, GOD. You know? So beautiful. But also Ashbery sizing up the same kind of moral question over and over a dozen times in the space of a poem, and with dozens of poems (including the formidable and exhausting kind of index of ideas in the title poem) it just wrung me utterly dry.
I could be completely wrong in my interpretation (Dana says: I could just be talking out of my ass) or doing the most pre-emptory surface reading. All this has happened before. (Particularly since Dana says t...more
I could be completely wrong in my interpretation (Dana says: I could just be talking out of my ass) or doing the most pre-emptory surface reading. All this has happened before. (Particularly since Dana says t...more
After all, he is the head of the epistemological revolution in American poetry (says T. Hoagland) and after all he is a so & so whatever fellow with an apartment on rails to prove it and didn't he live in Paris for a while like a good little J.A. He's laughing at us for loving him. I just know he's holding these flowers and he gets it. He gets us this big piece of the cake and we nibble it on the fat couch.
My second "Ashbury," and things are going along the lines of the first ("Houseboat Days"). An early WTF moment from the poem Absolute Clearance:
In the vague hotel room
The linear blotches when dusk
Lifted them up were days and nights
And out over the ocean
The wish persisted to be a dream at home
Cloud or bird asleep in a trough
Of discursive waters.
I don't know if I'll finish it or not. I read difficult poetry all the time, but this stuff... It's both beautiful and, for me at least, utterly meaningle...more
In the vague hotel room
The linear blotches when dusk
Lifted them up were days and nights
And out over the ocean
The wish persisted to be a dream at home
Cloud or bird asleep in a trough
Of discursive waters.
I don't know if I'll finish it or not. I read difficult poetry all the time, but this stuff... It's both beautiful and, for me at least, utterly meaningle...more
Ugh, wonderful! Wonderful wonderful wonderful! I haven't responded to poetry in this way in so long! I don't remember much of anything, and I understand probably even less, but I want to read this book and these poems again and again and again!
I found a podcast of Ashbery reading from the title poem for about 20 minutes, and this seemed a really productive inroad for me. The difficulty in recall with his work, for me, lies in the fact that Ashbery sequences images and thoughts in ways that foll...more
I found a podcast of Ashbery reading from the title poem for about 20 minutes, and this seemed a really productive inroad for me. The difficulty in recall with his work, for me, lies in the fact that Ashbery sequences images and thoughts in ways that foll...more
Jun 19, 2009
Stop
added it
Read the STOP SMILING interview with poet John Ashbery
I GUESS IT'S ROMANTIC, IF YOU'RE A DOG
By Greg Purcell + Fred Sasaki
(This interview originally appeared in the STOP SMILING Hollywood Lost & Found Issue)
The famed New York School of poetry was a network in the Fifties composed of friends, as they called one another, who didn’t know they were a part of any “school” at all. Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch and John Ashbery — poets themselves — simply met new poets, as they were in...more
I GUESS IT'S ROMANTIC, IF YOU'RE A DOG
By Greg Purcell + Fred Sasaki
(This interview originally appeared in the STOP SMILING Hollywood Lost & Found Issue)
The famed New York School of poetry was a network in the Fifties composed of friends, as they called one another, who didn’t know they were a part of any “school” at all. Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch and John Ashbery — poets themselves — simply met new poets, as they were in...more
Kind of stuffy at times (overwrought phrases that create a sense of melodramatic tension, feels very academic). Doesn't seem to be innovative, but he does achieve some elegant phrasings in places. Then again, sometimes it all comes off a bit didactic, preachy, or what have you, which is never very good. He has his moments, sure, but overall I just don't feel too strongly about it one way or another...
Perhaps his best, and his most accessible. His legacy is the embedded radical surprise(s) in a poem. The swift and yet appropriate turn of thought, from line to line. He's lived and published long enough to be able to enjoy his reputation--like Adrienne Rich, perhaps. Although he is New York School, Stephen Burt's Elliptical Poets owe him much--what he leaves out of a poem, the sharp and sensible jumps. The appreciation of syntax--here is a poet finding the poetry of the American idiom, as Willi...more
I don't know if I'm poetry-deaf or what, but this just seems like a bunch of words strung together for no reason other than to befuddle.
This collection of poems published in 1975, won the National Book Award, The Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Most books of poetry or anything else fail to win even one of those awards. But this one wins what is arguably the three biggest awards. I don't know for sure, but doubt if any other collection of poetry has such an accomplishment. I found the book "different" and challenging to read, but also worthwhile for those who presevere. It's the kind of book that proba...more
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror is the first Ashbery book I've read. I heard audio recordings of a couple of his poems, but never read any of his books.
Ashbery has a reputation for being hard. I see why! The first time I read through the book, I didn't start understanding the poems at all until about half way through the book, yet still liked them. When I read the book again, I understood it a lot more (but not totally) and really liked the poems. It is a weird feeling, liking poems while they...more
Ashbery has a reputation for being hard. I see why! The first time I read through the book, I didn't start understanding the poems at all until about half way through the book, yet still liked them. When I read the book again, I understood it a lot more (but not totally) and really liked the poems. It is a weird feeling, liking poems while they...more
I technically finished this book after a year of studying it, but I will no doubt continue to return to it, especially the long title poem, to continue to peel through its layers. Ashbery is a challenging poet, mapping the threads of conscious and unconscious thought with a precision that is sometimes baffling, but mostly illuminating. Though written all in free verse, he eschews any narrative impulses, including syntactical, to instead explore what constitutes a moment of being human, with the...more
My favorite poem in this book so far is "Lithuanian Dance Band," possibly because the voice in it reminds me of the voice of Ashbery's poet-friend Frank O'Hara, whom I love; however, there are many more echoes of T. S. Eliot than of Frank O'Hara in this book, as far as my untrained ear can make out.
I think most people would argue that Ashbery is a greater poet than O'Hara, but my heart prefers O'Hara nonetheless. O'Hara maintained a certain persona throughout much of his poetry: the persona of t...more
I think most people would argue that Ashbery is a greater poet than O'Hara, but my heart prefers O'Hara nonetheless. O'Hara maintained a certain persona throughout much of his poetry: the persona of t...more
I'm not sure what to say. As a volume, it left me feeling a bit befuddled. This might be a failing of the author or a failing of myself, and an inability to decode the complexities of many of these poems. There were some that I really enjoyed, that left me with strong feelings and more vague ideas and thoughts. I liked the poem of the same title very much. Some of the shorter ones as well.
I can't decide if I liked this book, or if I want to like it because I'm "supposed" to.
I can't decide if I liked this book, or if I want to like it because I'm "supposed" to.
These certainly are obscure poems, for the most part. Not that the syntax is difficult; but rather the statements, the metaphors and choice of phrases, are so opaquely self-willed. My reaction is mostly to wish for footnotes, then shrug. One exception among those I've read so far is the long title poem. It intrigues me; demands multiple readings and invites them; has some rewards up front but clearly reserves more.
Sep 24, 2008
Patrick Marcoux
added it
Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror is def my favorite poem. It is a long poem about standing in a museum and looking at a drawing from 1524 by Parmigianino. The depths Ashbery reaches to deal with this artwork, though. It reminds me of the line in Nabokov's Lolita where Humbert is talking about the long string of hotels he and Lolita pass through, and he uses this french term--uses it with a nod to Flaubert--"nous connumes" or something which he translates as "We came to know" as in We came to kno...more
In 1967 the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and in 1975 John Ashbery published Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Both works attained recognition for their creators as the highest achievement of contemporary art in their respective disciplines. I suppose it is unremarkable that every song on Sgt. Pepper is a memorable one, as almost every Beatle album had that distinction. Yet, it is worthy to note that, unlike most books of poetry, almost every poem in Self-Portrait has an...more
Stuffy and academic, most of these poems strive to ask the same questions over and over, pulling apart postcards in the way college professors do, but there's something special here––sometimes a very surprising phrase or idea, sometimes a curious moment that comes to life outside of the poem (much like the basis of the title poem)––that's really striking. I would have given it three stars, but "Self-Portrait" is one of the best poems ever, especially within the context of the collection.
Ashbery's poems have always made me feel dumb. I felt I totally got one of the poems in this collection, and half-got a couple more. But despite feeling intellectually inferior, I enjoyed reading several of these.
Ashberry ingeniously and musically connects all the (superficially) disparate elements of the title poem, which I imagine reading and re-reading for decades to come.
i'm not crazy about ashbery but the long title poem of this collection is probably my favorite work of ekphrasis.
May 20, 2010
Aloud LA
is currently reading it
Attend a multi-media reading of Ashbery's work on Tuesday, June 15th at ALOUD at Central Library. www.aloudla.org
Not sure why 5 stars. This book ruined my life. Title poem is better than "The Wasteland." I said it.
This one won a Pulitzer Prize, with the famous poem, "Foreboding" and the great title poem. I have the mass-market-sized Penguin paperback, yellow with age. This book has always been an inspiring one for me, I've used it for cut-ups for ages, because the lines are so intricately constructed. The best place to start, I think, for people who never read Ashbery before. Love the twists and turns, and it is around this time that Ashbery settles in to writing the kind of work he is so famous for. Alwa...more
Probably the greatest ad most influential book of poem written by a living poet!
So...not a fan. I wonder if I had Ashbery confused with someone else (as happens with me) when I bought this whenever I did. It's strange: you don't know where the poems are going to go, which is typically desirable. But it's like being taken round by a tour guide, and you may not know where you're going to be taken, but everywhere you end up is boring. And the tour guide is boring and sort of pretentious, too. The poems, their language and subjects, just feel flat to me.
The exception is the tit...more
The exception is the tit...more
Apr 05, 2010
Kenny
added it
i just let him toss and turn me wherever he darn well pleases.
dense as all heck, though.
dense as all heck, though.
One of the classic books of Contemporary American Poetry.
Incredibly "inside the brain," but still enjoyable.
I have tried so hard to relish Ashbery, but I don't get it. He doesn't have any music, he's perhaps the most prosaic poet I've ever read. He doesn't do narrative; whenever he starts to tell a story he gets distracted and piles on different ideas that I find distracting, and not in a good way. Unpicking the loony personal experience that Pound offers in The Cantos is really rewarding and interesting compared to this. And he won't shut up. Prolix. Unengaging. Dull. "Affirmation that doesn't affirm...more
There's a lot to like and not like here but overall, like. A lot. The title poem blows me away.
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John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, in 1927. He earned degrees from Harvard and Columbia, and he traveled as a Fulbright Scholar to France in 1955. Best known as a poet, he has published more than twenty collections, most recently A Worldly Country (Ecco, 2007). His Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (Viking, 1975) won the three major American prizes: the Pulitzer, the National Book Award,...more
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“The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes”
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“I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.”
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