John Ashbery And American Poetry

Download or read book John Ashbery and American Poetry written by David Herd and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A discussion of the poetry of John Ashbery. Showing that a sense of occasion - the sense that the poem should be fit for its occasion - was a binding principle for the poets of the New York School, David Herd traces the development of Ashbery's poetry in the light of this idea. The book is a study of Ashbery's career and also a history of the period in which that career has taken shape. The development of Ashbery's poetic is set against such culturally defining issues as: the institutionalisation of literature; the rise and fall of the avant-garde; mass culture; Vietnam; the absence of a divine presence; the erosion of tradition; the growth of celebrity; and the emergence of AIDS. Ashbery's responses to such issues are set against the work of Lowell, Berryman, O'Hara, Koch, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Oppen and Larkin.