Commotion of the Birds: New Poems
By John Ashbery
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
A crackling, moving new collection from one of America’s greatest living poets.
In over twenty-six original books, the poems of John Ashbery have long served as signposts guiding us through the delights, woes, hypocrisies, and uncertainties of living in the modern world. With language harvested from everyday speech, fragments of pop culture, objects and figures borrowed from art and literature, his work makes light out of darkness, playing with tone and style to show how even the seemingly frivolous stuff of existence can be employed to express the deepest levels of feeling.
Commotion of the Birds showcases once again Ashbery’s mastery of a staggering range of voices and his singular lyric agility: wry, frank, contemplative, resigned, bemused, and ecstatic. The poet in this new collection is at once removed from and immersed in the terrain of his examination. Disarmingly conversational, he invites the reader to join him in looking out onto the future with humor, curiosity, and insight. The lines of these poems achieve a low-humming, thrilling point of vibration, a jostling of feathers before flight.
John Ashbery
<p><strong>John Ashbery </strong>was born in Rochester, New York, in 1927. He wrote more than twenty books of poetry, including <em>Quick Question; Planisphere; Notes from the Air; A Worldly Country; Where Shall I Wander; </em>and <em>Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, </em>which received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. The winner of many prizes and awards, both nationally and internationally, he received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation in 2011 and a National Humanities Medal, presented by President Obama at the White House, in 2012. Ashbery died in September 2017 at the age of ninety.</p>
Read more from John Ashbery
Some Trees: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Wave: Poems Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Shadow Train: Poems Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Flow Chart: A Poem Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Three Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rivers and Mountains: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Houseboat Days: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5April Galleons: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5And the Stars Were Shining: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWakefulness: Poems Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Can You Hear, Bird: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Girls on the Run: A Poem Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Parallel Movement of the Hands: Five Unfinished Longer Works Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Double Dream of Spring: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chinese Whispers: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Breezeway: New Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYour Name Here: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As We Know: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hotel Lautréamont: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Collected French Translations: Prose Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Tennis Court Oath: A Book of Poems Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5
Related to Commotion of the Birds
Related ebooks
Civil Twilight: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNouns & Verbs: New and Selected Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mezzanine: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons): Poetry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5priced out Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFirst Four Books Of Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Humans, Consciousness, and Everything in Between Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Certain Hour Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe American Short Story. A Chronological History: Volume 1 - Uriah Derrick D'Arcy to Edgar Allan Poe Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Law of the Unforeseen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sound on the Page: Great Writers Talk about Style and Voice in Writing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTerrific Melancholy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThrow Me to the Wolves Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Certain Hour (Dizain des Poëtes) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEndless Joke Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAll You Nighthawks Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSketches and Eccentricities of Colonel David Crockett of West Tennessee Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Shapes of Light: Rediscovering poetry in a post-poetic age Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Very Private Life Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Come Closer and Listen: New Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The O: JA&L Prize for Flash Discourse Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBreezeway: New Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTorchlight Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMarch Book Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sword Blades and Poppy Seed Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVita Nova Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Room of One's Own (Hero Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGranted: Poems of Metaphor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTreasure Island (Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Poetry For You
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things We Don't Talk About Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dream Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of John Keats (with an Introduction by Robert Bridges) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Enough Rope: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Road Not Taken and other Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Commotion of the Birds
5 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Commotion of the Birds - John Ashbery
DEDICATION
FOR DAVID, AGAIN
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Rendering poetry in a digital format presents several challenges, just as its many forms continue to challenge the conventions of print. In print, however, a poem takes place within the static confines of a page, hewing as close as possible to the poet’s intent, whether it’s Walt Whitman’s lines stretching to the margin like Route 66, or Robert Creeley’s lines descending the page like a string tie. The printed poem has a physical shape, one defined by the negative space that surrounds it—a space that is crafted by the broken lines of the poem. The line, as vital a formal and critical component of the form of a poem as metaphor, creates rhythm, timing, proportion, drama, meaning, tension, and so on.
Reading poetry on a small device will not always deliver line breaks as the poet intended—with the pressure the horizontal line brings to a poem, rather than the completion of the grammatical unit. The line, intended as a formal and critical component of the form of the poem, has been corrupted by breaking it where it was not meant to break, interrupting a number of important elements of the poetic structure—rhythm, timing, proportion, drama, meaning, and so on. It’s a little like a tightrope walker running out of rope before reaching the other side.
There are limits to what can be done with long lines on digital screens. At some point, a line must break. If it has to break more than once or twice, it is no longer a poetic line, with the integrity that lineation demands. On smaller devices with enlarged type, a line break may not appear where its author intended, interrupting the unit of the line and its importance in the poem’s structure.
We attempt to accommodate long lines with a hanging indent—similar in fashion to the way Whitman’s lines were treated in books whose margins could not honor his discursive length. On your screen, a long line will break according to the space available, with the remainder of the line wrapping at an indent. This allows readers to retain control over the appearance of text on any device, while also indicating where the author intended the line to break.
This may not be a perfect solution, as some readers initially may be confused. We have to accept, however, that we are creating poetry e-books in a world that is imperfect for them—and we understand that to some degree the line may be compromised. Despite this, we’ve attempted to protect the integrity of the line, thus allowing readers of poetry to travel fully stocked with the poetry that needs to be with them.
—Dan Halpern, Publisher
CONTENTS
COVER
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
COMMOTION OF THE BIRDS
PRAYER NOT TO TOUCH
FEATURETTE
TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE
THE UNDERLING
WHO WILL DO THE KISSING?
RAINBOW LAUNDRY
LATE-ISH
THE HAPPY QUESTIONER
A FUNNY DREAM
THE OLD SOFA
THE NATIONAL DEBT
THE ANXIOUS MUSIC
AS SOMEONE WHO LIKES TRAVEL
DANGEROUS ASYLUM
BELEAGUERED
BUT NOBODY SAYS SO
FOOD EPISODE
HILLBILLY AIRS AND DANCES
A SEPARATE INCIDENT