[Shadow Train] is a sustained experiment with a new short form…. In the past, Ashbery's lyrical strengths were best exemplified by his long poems, but now he seems able to move just as freely in a briefer space. His work has an operatic air, entertaining us with a variety of cadenzas performed against pleasantly tacky backdrops. The actual sense of the action is elusive, as in opera, and one hardly cares, coming away with a comfortable feeling that the tone has somehow carried all the important meaning. Much has been said about Ashbery's polite evasion of any attempt to synopsize "plot" in his poems and certainly there are many mysterious passages in his verse….

Ashbery carries the old saw that "poetry is its own subject" to its limit. "Paradoxes and Oxymorons" claims to be "concerned with language on a very plain level. / Look at [the poem] talking to...