Book/70078

Hotel Lautreamont

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

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Product Description
Critics, scholars, students, and other readers of contemporary poetry have long appreciated Ashbery's uncanny mastery of the cadence and lyricism of colloquial speech, but they have been less sensitive to the equally important influences in his work of such "outsider" French poets as Arthur Rimbaud, Raymond Roussel, and Isidore Ducasse (a/k/a Count de Lautréamont). These sometimes overlooked presences are wonderfully alive in this collection of lyric poems, which first appeared in 1992. Now back in print, Hotel Lautréamont underscores Ashbery's ability to be both tragic and playful, dense and volatile, passionate and impersonal. As David Herd observed in New Statesman and Society, this is "a poetry fully and startlingly engaged with the way things happen."

Customer Reviews:
Ashbery Deserves Better

This intriguing, surreal book of poems does not deserve the nasty treatment dished out by the (until now) sole reviewer of this book. I was appalled not just by the mean-spirited nature of the review but also by how strikingly different my impression of Hotel Lautreamont is. It is as though we read two different books. Whatever grudge the earlier reviewer is obviously harboring toward Mr. Ashbery, please do not let this pedantic vocabulary fetishist deter you from a truly rewarding experience.

PS: The uninformed slur on General Grant is worthy of a duel!

Yes
As daring as Ulysses Grant, as timorous as Tennyson, as bold as Beddoes, this imbroglio of tepid vignettes, this rebarbative hymnal of blithe spirituals, never ceases to fascinate the "hypocrite lecteur" -- until, of course, it does.