John Ashbery and English Poetry

Description

A study of how we should read one of America's most important poetsBen Hickman argues that we must attend to Ashbery's radical conception of reading if we are to understand the originality of his writing. His study focuses on Ashbery's reading of English poets, including Andrew Marvell, John Donne, William Wordsworth, John Clare, T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden, and examines Ashbery's writing in terms of an 'aesthetic of inattention'. Hickman critiques the Americanisation of Ashbery's work as well as common assumptions about his Romanticism, his avant-garde Modernism and his engagement with the historical present. He demonstrates that Ashbery's generosity as a writer is closely tied to his generosity, inattention and situatedness as a reader.Key FeaturesOriginal new reading of Ashbery's affinities with English poetry and his engagement with different poets and traditionsDraws on research undertaken at the Houghton archive, where Ashbery's papers are heldInnovative approach will help reshape the critical apparatus for appreciating contemporary poetry as a whole