John Ashbery Critical Essay | Critical Review by Paul Zweig

Critical Review by Paul Zweig

SOURCE: A review of Three Poems, in The New York Times Book Review, April 9, 1972, pp. 4, 18, 20.

In the following essay, Zweig commends Ashbery's use of hermetic language.

I read each new book by John Ashbery with the same puzzlement and fascination. Ashbery's finely tuned style never lapses into the commonplace. Every poem creates a mood of density and discretion, which is almost magical. And yet one never knows quite what the poems are about. His fine elaboration of images and arguments forms a concealing net, a sort of camouflage that works not so much by covering over as by fascinating, so that one forgets to pursue one's hunger for logic amid the glories of pure language. Not since Hart Crane has an American poet made difficulty so thoroughly into a means of expression.

Here are the opening lines of "The Skaters," from Ashbery's collection Rivers and...
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