Washington Post Reviews Ashbery, Best American Poetry, & Danez Smith

Washington Post columnist Elizabeth Lund delves into poetry by John Ashbery, Danez Smith, and a new Best American Poetry Anthology, edited by Natasha Trethewey, in her latest article. She begins with Ashbery, who passed away this month at the age of 90, and whose Collected Poems: 1991-2000 recently debuted from Library of America. Lund writes, "John Ashbery, who died Sept. 3 at age 90 , left an indelible mark on American poetry." From there: 

His avant-garde approach stretched, twisted and redefined the concept of poetry. In 1976 he won the Pulitzer, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his collection “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.” Now, with the publication of Ashbery: Collected Poems 1991-2000(The Library of America), edited by Mark Ford, readers can delve into the seven books Ashbery published mid-career, when his writing was moving in new directions. The collection opens with his monumental book-length poem “Flow Chart” (1991), orchestral in its span and scope as Ashbery explores his thought process and the collective experience of everyday life, which we know “is so busy, but a larger activity shrouds it, and this is something/we can never feel, except /occasionally,/in small signs/put up to warn us.” Other sections feature shorter, tighter pieces that highlight some of his interests — opera, French poetry, the artist Henry Darger — and demonstrate Ashbery’s tremendous range as a poet who masterfully combined the mundane and the dreamlike. Along the way, the poems offer hints about how to read them, as in “I Found Their Advice,” from the book “Hotel Lautreamont”: “When you hear the language/ (not the spirit of the language) it unfolds like a shelf/ just to be equal with the level you have risen to./ A change takes place.”

Learn more at Washington Post.