Selected Prose

John Ashbery has been called "the finest poet in English of his generation" (The Times). A broad selection of Ashbery´s prose writings from 1957 to 2004 are collected here for the first time. Literary reviews and essays, articles on film, and key pieces of art and criticism, some never published, reveal acritical intelligence that has had a profound impact on the cultural landscape of the past half century. His reviews of Gertrude Stein´s Stanzas in meditation and of giorgio de Chirico´s Hebdomeros, as well as his essays on Raymond Roussel, are contemporary classics. Less familiar, but contemporary illuminating, are his discussions of Antonin Artaud, Jacques Rivette, Marianne Moore and Robert Mapplethorpe.

This collection of Ashbery´s critical writings dramatically expands the terrain covered by his first two books of essays, Reported Sightings: Art Chronicles 1957-1987 (Carcanet 1990) and Other traditions (first presented as the Norton Lectures at Harvard in 1989-1990).