Ashbery, John

A Wave: Poems

ISBN: 0670751766
New York, NY, USA: Viking Press, 1984. First Edition. John Ashbery (1927–2017) was recognized as one of the greatest 20th-century American poets. He won nearly every major American award for poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Yale Younger Poets Prize, the Bollingen Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Griffin International Award, and a MacArthur “Genius” Grant. Ashbery’s poetry challenges its readers to discard all presumptions about the aims, themes, and stylistic scaffolding of verse in favor of a literature that reflects upon the limits of language and the volatility of consciousness. In 2008, critic Langdon Hammer remarked, “No figure looms so large in American poetry over the past 50 years as John Ashbery.” Offered today is Ashbery’s 1984 poetic masterwork, A Wave. From inside front flap of dust jacket: “In this, his tenth collection of poetry, John Ashbery takes life itself as subject–both the way it feels from inside and its external aspects: ‘Scenes from movies, plays, operas, television; decisive or little-known episodes from history; pre-natal and other early memories from our own solitary, separate pasts; events yet to come from life or art; calamities or moments of relaxation; universal or personal tragedies; or little vignettes from daily life that you just had to stop and laugh at, they were so funny,’ as he writes in ‘Description of a Masque.’ In the magnificent long poem ‘A Wave,’ one participates in a life that slowly builds to a crisis like ‘a giant wave that picks itself up / Out of a calm sea and retreats again into nowhere / Once its damage is done,’ before easing toward a bittersweet resolution.” We have found and retained between front cover and first paste down page, a promotional flyer/memo from Viking Press for A Wave; this promotional material has a synopsis for the work and the poem At North Farm. From the collection of Laurence Goldstein (1943-2023), poet, editor, and professor in the University of Michigan Department of English Language and Literature. Hardcover in unclipped first issue dust jacket. First edition, first published in 1984 by The Viking Press as stated at copyright page presumed first printing though not explicated as such. Book is in very fine condition with only slight wear to fine edges; dust jacket in very fine condition with light wear to fine edges and minor smudging to front and back covers. Very Fine. [Item #6940]

Price: $60.00