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Wakefulness: Poems

Farrar, Straus and Giroux Search Farrar, Straus and Giroux by John Ashbery Search John Ashbery

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Early in the title work of Wakefulness, Ashbery writes: "Little by little the idea of the true way returned to me." Progressive awakenings occur in all of these poems. As we read, each of our senses is engaged, and we come to detect a search for spiritual revelations--in buildings, churches, homes, trains, and cars. Then suddenly we find ourselves back in the open, pursuing the course to Baltimore and Bucharest, to the zoo and the park, to the past and future. As ever, Ashbery's wakeful digressions are wily, comic, heartbreaking, and vertiginous.

If John Ashbery pays any allegiance in these poems, it is to the syntax of dreams. Wakefulness captures the spirit of the sleeping mind, a place where past, present, and future function simultaneously, and where one might find, for instance, seraphs and parking lots, or jesters and dashboards, whimsically juxtaposed. As is often the case in dream worlds, the speaker embarks on a journey. Just where he is going remains elusive, but we do know that there is madness "in the next sleeping car" and "no release in sight." True to the unconscious mind, these poems follow their own idiosyncratic logic, as in, "It was a misunderstanding, mudsliding / from the side where the thing was let in. / And it was all goose, let me tell you, braided goose..." Ashbery deliberately roughens his edges, as if he genuinely believes, as the speaker warns in "Added Poignancy," that "millions of languages / became extinct, and not because there was nothing left to say in them, / but because it was all said too well, with / nary a dewdrop on the moment of glottal expulsion."

Exceptional in their daring wordplay and rhyme, teeming with the unexpected, the eccentric, and the downright freakish, these poems capture our attention by refusing to conform to narrative expectations. Here we enter the mind of an exacting genius, a mind so taken with the subtleties of language, with the way words are laid down, that when he states: "Each is truly a unique piece, / you said, or, perhaps, each / is a truly unique piece. I sniff the difference," we believe him. --Martha Silano

Customer Reviews:
Ashbery at his Sharpest

If you have read "Chinese Whispers" and "Your Name Here," then "Wakefulness" is kind of the first part of that set. "Wakefulness" has its surprising slopes that only Ashbery can give us but there is also a distant cohesiveness to it that an Ashbery follower can pick up. I often try to think of a way to describe what an Ashbery poem is like as if I was explaining it to someone who might cringe at the difficulty Ashbery presents us. These poems are like a light sleep in front of the tv where commercials and sitcoms sprinkle an already watery dream: the real mixes with the dreamed real. None of these poems, and not many of Ashbery's poems, are barreling down on the reader in a straight line. Everything is smoke in a fan. Once one can step inside Ashbery's voice, then there is a comfortablity in the chaos, as there is inside our heads.

Amazing brilliances in the smallest things
Here you will find the body and mind of the post-modern world
unfolding before your eyes, with all its pleasures, its anxieties, its lost dreams, its hopes. It is the world we know, because it is already in us, part of us--it is always arriving, always arrived. But, there is more. Ashbery, through unique images and juxtapositions, brings into the open a world not quite satisfied with itself, sometimes too satisfied--in a state of suspended satisfaction, sometimes leading to nausea. It is a world looking for experiences under every log and at every corner, only to find the rates of exchange rising and the necessity for experiences increasing. It is a world placed smack dap in the impossibility of its own being. What we have in "Wakefulness" is the journey of many selves through many worlds, many doors, all leading back to a haunting singularity of space and time. One gets the uncanning feeling in each poem that one has been there before, or even that one, if only momentarily, exists only in and through the words that appear on the page. This is what poetry should be. There are echoes of all the greats here, from the English romantics, to Dickinson and Stevens and beyond. But, Ashbery knows how to tame these echoes, how to humour them, disinheret them, and reclaim them for his own purposes, making these poems fully his own. I highly recommend this book and any other Ashbery books.

The poet at his best!
A marvelous collection. The quote on the inner cover (by Harold Bloom) says it all "The book is a profound pleasure, the gift of a master."

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