4thace reviewed Self-portrait in a convex mirror by John Ashbery
Review of 'Self-portrait in a convex mirror' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
I reviewed this author's book [b:Parallel Movement of the Hands: Five Unfinished Longer Works|55338967|Parallel Movement of the Hands Five Unfinished Longer Works|John Ashbery|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1604992089l/55338967.SX50.jpg|69426849] earlier here, which came out in the years after his death. This book was surprisingly hard to find through my local bookseller, the library, or even through Amazon, even though it was notable enough to win a Pulitzer Prize a few decades back. I found it at Ebay, the last resort for that kind of search. The style was familiar with the same mystifying shifts of thought. Some poems you read are like a hound trading a scent to its source, but these are more like butterflies wandering almost aimlessly from place to place. There isn't the popular culture angle of the other book here so it's a little bit more conventional in that way, although it does have the same kind of conversational feel …
I reviewed this author's book [b:Parallel Movement of the Hands: Five Unfinished Longer Works|55338967|Parallel Movement of the Hands Five Unfinished Longer Works|John Ashbery|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1604992089l/55338967.SX50.jpg|69426849] earlier here, which came out in the years after his death. This book was surprisingly hard to find through my local bookseller, the library, or even through Amazon, even though it was notable enough to win a Pulitzer Prize a few decades back. I found it at Ebay, the last resort for that kind of search. The style was familiar with the same mystifying shifts of thought. Some poems you read are like a hound trading a scent to its source, but these are more like butterflies wandering almost aimlessly from place to place. There isn't the popular culture angle of the other book here so it's a little bit more conventional in that way, although it does have the same kind of conversational feel that avoids fancy words or turns of phrase at the same time it is so puzzling. It closes with the long poem of the title which starts off talking about the pointing it's named after but veers away from painting and the Renaissance and art to ideas which have tenuous connections, sometimes personal, sometimes cosmic. It is remarkable how it comes back around almost by surprise, I don't know anyone else who writes this way. Does that make Ashbery a dead end in literature? I don't know, but for me it feels like it does represent something about experience that I com appreciate. Maybe not right away.
