Product Description

incl SOME TREES (1956) thru THREE POEMS (1972)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1774934 in Books
• Published on: 1997-06-01
• Released on: 1997-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 389 pages

Amazon.com Review
Most critics would agree that John Ashbery is one of 20th-century American poetry's finest voices. Perhaps his most admired book is Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, a culmination of themes, styles, and forms with which the poet experimented over the course of two decades. Now, the poet's devoted readers can trace his development through the first five books of his poetry, collected here in one handy volume. The Mooring of Starting Out represents Ashbery's work from 1956 through 1972, comprising Some Trees, his first book; The Tennis Court Oath, written while he was living in Paris; Rivers and Mountains; The Double Dream of Spring; and Three Poems.

From Library Journal
At a time when so much routine poetry is being churned out by poets intent on self-promotion, it's heartening to realize that a poet as rigorous as Ashbery is still with us. This is not, alas, a new collection, but never mind. The five early books represented here?Some Trees (1956), The Tennis Court Oath (1962), Rivers and Mountains (1967), The Double Dream of Spring (1970), and Three Poems (1972)?have all been out of print for some time, and having them back in one volume is not only delightful but necessary for anyone who cares about poetry. How else can younger readers learn what poetry is all about? This work was put together to honor Ashbery's 70th birthday; an added treat is Jorie Graham's introduction. Recommended for libraries lacking any of these early works. ?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
...it is not because Ashbery is a "strong" poet (to use Harold Bloom's favored term) that his work remains so inviting. It is rather because he is, in a special sense, an exemplarily weak one, full of representative doubts and anxieties, fond memories, misapprehensions and fears. His poetry appeals not because it offers wisdom in a packaged form, but because the elusiveness and mysterious promise of his lines reminds us that we always have a future and a condition of meaningfulness to start out toward. -- The New York Times Book Review, Nicholas Jenkins

An Additional Poem
Album Leaf
America
Answering A Question In The Mountains
As You Know
The Ascetic Sensualists
A Blessing In Disguise
A Boy
The Bungalows
Canzone
Chaos
The Chateau Hardware
Civilization And Its Discontents
Clepsydra
Clouds
Decoy
Definition Of Blue
The Double Dream Of Spring
The Ecclesiast
Eclogue
Errors
Europe
Evening In The Country
Farm Implements And Rutabagas In A Landscape
Faust
For John Clare
Fragment
French Poems
Glazunoviana
Grand Abacus
The Grapevine
He
The Hero
The Hod Carrier
Hotel Dauphin
How Much Longer Will I Be Able To Inhabit The Divine Sepulcher
Idaho
If The Birds Knew
Illustration
The Instruction Manual
Into The Dusk-charged Air
It Was Raining In The Capital
Landscape
Last Month
A Last World
Le Livre Est Sur La Table
Leaving The Atocha Station
A Life Drama
A Long Novel
The Lozenges
Measles
Meditations Of A Parrot
The Mythological Poet
The New Realism
The New Spirit
Night
The Orioles
Our Youth
An Outing
The Painter
Pantoum
Parergon
The Passive Preacher
A Pastoral
The Picture Of Little J.a. In A Prospect Of Flowers
The Pied Piper
Plainness In Diversity
Poem
Popular Songs
Rain
The Recent Past
The Recital
Rivers And Mountains
Rural Objects
The Shower
The Skaters: 1
The Skaters: 2
The Skaters: 3
The Skaters: 4
Some Trees
Some Words (from The French Of Arthur Cravan)
Song
Sonnet
Sonnet
Soonest Mended
Sortes Vergilianae
Spring Day
Summer
Sunrise In Suburbia
The Suspended Life
The System
The Task
The Tennis Court Oath
These Lacustrine Cities
They Dream Only Of America
The Thinnest Shadow
Thoughts Of A Young Girl
The Thousand Islands
The Ticket
To Redoute
To The Same Degree
Two Scenes: 1
Two Scenes: 2
Two Sonnets: 1. Dido
Two Sonnets: 2. The Idiot
The Unknown Travelers
Variations, Calypso And Fugue On A Theme Of Ella Wheeler Wilcox
The Way They Took
A White Paper
White Roses
Years Of Indiscretion
Young Man With Letter
The Young Son
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

This collection of the poet's work from 1956 to 1972 demonstrates Ashbery's tireless efforts to remain poetically fresh. -- A New York Times Notable Book of 1998; New York Times Book Review, 6 December 1998

Customer Reviews

Ashbery's Pompatus of Love
Reviewing John Ashbery is a somewhat daunting prospect - but, then again, at one time I found just reading his poetry an equally intimidating proposal. Since you might be facing the latter situation, let me describe why I think this book, "The Mooring of Starting Out", is a particularly worthwhile place to enjoy Mr. Ashbery's work. Along the way I'll mention a useful book of essays about his poetry and try to briefly address the question of `meaning' in his poems.

You're probably here because you've read some of Ashbery's poetry - if so, you can't help but have noticed that his approach to language is very different from many poets. (If you have never read any of his work I suggest you go to the poets.org website to take a look at the samples posted.) If you remain undaunted, and are now considering buying this compilation of the contents of his first five books of poetry, good! Here's why.

Ashbery's first five books bounced around in style and approach much more so than his recent work. This is not to imply that he has settled into one or another form - he remains one of the most inventive poets around; just be encouraged to experience the wild ride that his early creative career seems to have comprised. You will get a multifaceted view of his paths to the powerful creativity of his more recent work: the magnificent epic of "Flow Chart" and the sweep of "Self-Portrait in Convex Mirror."

Each of the five offers its own unique appeal. The poems from "Some Trees" show a range of experimentation unusual in a first book - a lot of people back in 1956 must have been wondering where Ashbery was headed. Then "The Tennis Court Oath" appeared and, I'm told, outraged the poetry establishment; its jarring `meaning-less-ness' apparently leaving some feeling they were being hoodwinked. In 1967 "Rivers and Mountains" demonstrated Ashbery's facility for the long poem with "The Skaters", and between that book and the following "Double Dream of Spring" can be found many of the works considered exemplary of his first 16 years. Finally, in 1972, came book number five, my favorite, "Three Poems." Diving deep into a Proustian, paragraphless prose form, these three reflections on the nature of things seem as heartbreakingly timely now as they must have been then.

The really nice thing about "Mooring..." is that you have all five books in hand at once. Notwithstanding their arrangement in chronological order, you can skip around. I'd encourage you to do so. Otherwise you risk a `big gulp' effect - a disorder of digestion that will come from trying to `get through' sixteen years of his writing in a few days. After all, readers of "Some Trees" back in 1956 had six years to await the `outrages' of "Tennis Court"; six years to read and reread. Why should you clearcut the sixty-odd pages of "Trees" in an evening or two? Besides, the book comes with a stylish yellow bookmark-ribbon (at least the hardcover does), that you can use to keep track of a less-than-linear stroll through the poems in the book.

I must admit that I found myself frequently flummoxed by John Ashbery's poetry over the past few years since I first discovered his "Flow Chart." I was, nevertheless, drawn like a moth to SOMETHING in there. Now you may be a more clever reader than I, but it took a few prostheses for me to figure out what was going on - to start to get an idea why I was drawn to the poetry and what I was getting out of it.

If that sort of push-pull relationship has brought you this far to take a peek at his early work, let me loan you my crutch. I discovered a copy of "Beyond Amazement", a book of essays about Ashbery's poetry, published in 1980 and edited by David Lehman. I found this book invaluable. Sort of like those hook-ish things rock climbers use. You might still find yourself swinging out in space, but one or another of the essays in "Amazement" will have offered a view of the nature of Ashbery's poetic quest that can serve as an anchor of sorts.

You may, like me, skip the few essays in "Amazement" which overdo the lit-crit crowing, but mostly they are helpful: quite frank in acknowledging the `problem' of meaning in Ashbery's poetry and quite insightful in providing conceptual anchors for his readers. And since these essays were published before Ashbery's big `hits' they tilt more toward the works collected in "Mooring."

With the help of "Beyond Amazement", I have come to a wider appreciation of the forms of meaning in Ashbery's poetry and to a more satisfying reading of "The Mooring of Starting Out." Explicit meaning can be seen as only a piece of what most of us seek in poetry or any art. Given the wordless form of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, would we deny its powerful effect on a listener as holding no `meaning.' For that matter, just think about all those pieces of popular music over the years which you hummed over and over but whose lyrics you never even understood - what was the "pompatus of love" that Steve Miller sang of? We seem to feel meaning tugging at us from unverbal or simply incomprehensible realms, whether in poetry or any other work of art.

John Ashbery has spent almost fifty years mulling the ability of words, word-sounds, and even word-absences to line up on a page and nevertheless chart the less-than-linear bridge to meaning. "The Mooring of Starting Out" offers a fine glimpse into his early efforts.

The Distractions of Really
I'm just beginning my wrestle with this beautiful, maddening book and can already see it's going to be a long and fruitful one. Little here sounds early--the unsettling dreaminess, walking a thin line between philosophy and nonsense, is there from the first and only deepens. The voice is one you're bound to recognize, a blend of uncertainty and love for the surface beauty of things; a world constantly appearing, but never there long enough to leave more than a skater's trace. And tres American. It's hard to imagine (here in the first flush) how any other way of writing could speak so prettily and still keep a straight face in this doubting age of ours that offers so much to see and love.

A collection of his experimental early years.
A poet in the line of Whitman, Stevens, and Crane, Ashbery began his career as an art critic -- his early work reflects this aesthetic. A beautiful book, The Mooring of Starting Out includes the book Rivers and Mountains, often considered Ashbery's greatest foray into the imaginative verse of Poundian writers. It includes his first long poem, The Skaters, which is wonderful. This book is a treat if you like to think.