Commotion of the Birds: New Poems - Hardcover

Ashbery, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062565095 ISBN 13: 9780062565099

Publisher: Ecco Press, 2016

Synopsis

A crackling, moving new collection from one of America's greatest living poets.

In over twenty-six original books, the poems of John Ashbery have long served as signposts guiding us through the delights, woes, hypocrisies, and uncertainties of living in the modern world. With language harvested from everyday speech, fragments of pop culture, objects and figures borrowed from art and literature, his work makes light out of darkness, playing with tone and style to show how even the seemingly frivolous stuff of existence can be employed to express the deepest levels of feeling.

Commotion of the Birds showcases once again Ashbery's mastery of a staggering range of voices and his singular lyric agility: wry, frank, contemplative, resigned, bemused, and ecstatic. The poet in this new collection is at once removed from and immersed in the terrain of his examination. Disarmingly conversational, he invites the reader to join him in looking out onto the future with humor, curiosity, and insight. The lines of these poems achieve a low-humming, thrilling point of vibration, a jostling of feathers before flight.

About this title

Review

'The lyrics in Breezeway are as good as his finest.' --The Observer

'Quick Question, with the hushed intensity of its music and great lyric beauty, could only be Ashbery.' --Financial Times

'He is quite simply the finest poet in English of his generation.' --The Times

From the Back Cover

For more than sixty years, the poems of John Ashbery have served as signposts guiding us through the delights, woes, hypocrisies, and uncertainties of living in the modern world. With language harvested from everyday speech, fragments of pop culture, and objects and figures borrowed from art and literature, his work makes light out of darkness, playing with tone and style to show how even the seemingly frivolous stuff of existence can be employed to express the deepest levels of feeling.

Commotion of the Birds, his twenty-seventh collection, once again showcases Ashbery's mastery of a staggering range of voices and his singular lyric agility: wry, frank, contemplative, resigned, bemused, and ecstatic. The poet in this new collection is at once removed from and immersed in the terrain of his examination. Disarmingly conversational, he invites the reader to join him in looking out onto the future with humor, curiosity, and insight. The lines of these poems achieve a low-humming, thrilling point of vibration, a jostling of feathers before flight.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0062565095
• ISBN 13: 9780062565099
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 112