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Rivers and Mountains
Book by Ashbery, John
63 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
22 people are currently reading
540 people want to read
About the author
John Ashbery
288 books475 followersFormal experimentation and connection to visual art of noted American poet John Ashbery of the original writers of New York School won a Pulitzer Prize for
Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror
(1975).
From Harvard and Columbia, John Ashbery earned degrees, and he traveled of James William Fulbright to France in 1955. He published more than twenty best known collections, most recently A Worldly Country (2007). Wystan Hugh Auden selected early Some Trees for the younger series of Elihu Yale, and he later obtained the major national book award and the critics circle. He served as executive editor of Art News and as the critic for magazine and Newsweek. A member of the academies of letters and sciences, he served as chancellor from 1988 to 1999. He received many awards internationally and fellowships of John Simon Guggenheim and John Donald MacArthur from 1985 to 1990. People translated his work into more than twenty languages. He lived and from 1990 served as the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. professor of languages and literature at Bard college.
From Harvard and Columbia, John Ashbery earned degrees, and he traveled of James William Fulbright to France in 1955. He published more than twenty best known collections, most recently A Worldly Country (2007). Wystan Hugh Auden selected early Some Trees for the younger series of Elihu Yale, and he later obtained the major national book award and the critics circle. He served as executive editor of Art News and as the critic for magazine and Newsweek. A member of the academies of letters and sciences, he served as chancellor from 1988 to 1999. He received many awards internationally and fellowships of John Simon Guggenheim and John Donald MacArthur from 1985 to 1990. People translated his work into more than twenty languages. He lived and from 1990 served as the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. professor of languages and literature at Bard college.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
December 22, 2020
He writes, “The train is still sitting in the station./ You only dreamed it was in motion” (175).
And then I cry.
And then I cry.
July 19, 2024
John Ashberry might not be my man, or he might be, but I need to work on my poetry-reading chops to find this out. There are sublime lines left-and-right, of such density that I can’t help but find my eyes glazing over after 10 minutes or so. Ashberry’s writing requires much attention and focus in order to be appreciated, and when that is given, it is an incredible experience. But the flip side is that as soon as one stops paying that intensive attention, the writing passes over, as if it were flat or empty.
I wonder if with more practice in reading poetry like his, I could come to take in more at a time. So far my favorite poets (e.g., Anne Carson, Louise Gluck, William Blake, Sappho) whom I can read for hours on end, write in a way where abstract imagery and metaphor is dispersed less densely and is interspersed with more straightforward language; or the imaginary often isn’t too abstract. A side-note: it’s interesting to reflect upon what makes such imaginary relatively intelligible—is it that it’s not as innovative and follows common phrases, and so is habitual and easy? Or is it that it’s more thematically anchored and close to what’s “literally” communicated—and if so, how would one measure such “closeness”? I don’t think it’s because these writers use habitual phrases, but I could be wrong… I wonder whether in contrast it’s fair to say that Ashberry’s imagery is particularly abstract, complex, or counterintuitive, or what features may be picked out of it which explains this difference in quality of reading experience?
Something I found admirable and fascinating about Ashberry: My favorite poets might be dubbed “confessional” in their style. Their poems are overwhelmingly emotional, and these emotions are tethered to their suffering regarding romantic relationships, childhood trauma, or parts of life of that ilk. Ashberry is a strange writer. His writing is also overwhelmingly emotional, but often without going into those parts of life. Or when it goes into those, it does so in such a way as to also go into suffering at a more cosmic level—the suffering that arises from history, politics, war, or facets of the human condition that are above any interpersonal relationships. I appreciate this. It feels like a perfect balance between the personal and the impersonal, or the emotional and the rational.
Here are some of my favorite lines from poems of this collection:
“This should be a letter/ Throwing you a minute to one side,/ Of how this tossing looks harmonious from a distance,/ Like sea or the tops of trees, and how/ Only when one gets closer is its sadness small and appreciable./ It can be held in the hand./ All tho must go into a letter.”
“Tomorrow you’ll weep—what of it? There is time enough/ Once the harvest is in and the animals put away for the winter/ To stand at the uncomprehending window cultivating the desert/ With salt tears which will never do anyone any good./ My dearest I am as a galleon on salt billows./ Perfume my head with forgetting all about me.”
“There is no longer any use in harping on/ The incredible principle of daylong silence, the dark sunlight/ As only the grass is beginning to know it,/ The wreath of the North Pole,/ Festoons for the late return, the sky pensioners/ Agasp on the lamp lit air. What is agreeable/ Is to hold your hand… I have already swallowed the poison/ And could only gaze into the distance at my life/ like a saint’s with each day distinct”
I wonder if with more practice in reading poetry like his, I could come to take in more at a time. So far my favorite poets (e.g., Anne Carson, Louise Gluck, William Blake, Sappho) whom I can read for hours on end, write in a way where abstract imagery and metaphor is dispersed less densely and is interspersed with more straightforward language; or the imaginary often isn’t too abstract. A side-note: it’s interesting to reflect upon what makes such imaginary relatively intelligible—is it that it’s not as innovative and follows common phrases, and so is habitual and easy? Or is it that it’s more thematically anchored and close to what’s “literally” communicated—and if so, how would one measure such “closeness”? I don’t think it’s because these writers use habitual phrases, but I could be wrong… I wonder whether in contrast it’s fair to say that Ashberry’s imagery is particularly abstract, complex, or counterintuitive, or what features may be picked out of it which explains this difference in quality of reading experience?
Something I found admirable and fascinating about Ashberry: My favorite poets might be dubbed “confessional” in their style. Their poems are overwhelmingly emotional, and these emotions are tethered to their suffering regarding romantic relationships, childhood trauma, or parts of life of that ilk. Ashberry is a strange writer. His writing is also overwhelmingly emotional, but often without going into those parts of life. Or when it goes into those, it does so in such a way as to also go into suffering at a more cosmic level—the suffering that arises from history, politics, war, or facets of the human condition that are above any interpersonal relationships. I appreciate this. It feels like a perfect balance between the personal and the impersonal, or the emotional and the rational.
Here are some of my favorite lines from poems of this collection:
“This should be a letter/ Throwing you a minute to one side,/ Of how this tossing looks harmonious from a distance,/ Like sea or the tops of trees, and how/ Only when one gets closer is its sadness small and appreciable./ It can be held in the hand./ All tho must go into a letter.”
“Tomorrow you’ll weep—what of it? There is time enough/ Once the harvest is in and the animals put away for the winter/ To stand at the uncomprehending window cultivating the desert/ With salt tears which will never do anyone any good./ My dearest I am as a galleon on salt billows./ Perfume my head with forgetting all about me.”
“There is no longer any use in harping on/ The incredible principle of daylong silence, the dark sunlight/ As only the grass is beginning to know it,/ The wreath of the North Pole,/ Festoons for the late return, the sky pensioners/ Agasp on the lamp lit air. What is agreeable/ Is to hold your hand… I have already swallowed the poison/ And could only gaze into the distance at my life/ like a saint’s with each day distinct”
May 14, 2020
It is not a question, then,
Of having not lived in vain. What is meant is that this distant
Image of you, the way you really are, is the test
Of how you see yourself, and regardless of whether or not
You hesitate, it may be assumed that you have won, that this
Wooden and external representation
Returns the full echo of what you meant
With nothing left over, from that circumference now alight
With ex-possibilities become present fact, and you
Must wear them like clothing, moving in the shadow of
Your single and twin existence, waking in intact
Appreciation of it; while morning is still and before the body
Is changed by the faces of evening.
A major step forward from The Tennis Court Oath, Ashbery comes fully into his own with Rivers and Mountains. Two of his early masterpieces are here: the long poems "Clepsydra" and "The Skaters."
Of having not lived in vain. What is meant is that this distant
Image of you, the way you really are, is the test
Of how you see yourself, and regardless of whether or not
You hesitate, it may be assumed that you have won, that this
Wooden and external representation
Returns the full echo of what you meant
With nothing left over, from that circumference now alight
With ex-possibilities become present fact, and you
Must wear them like clothing, moving in the shadow of
Your single and twin existence, waking in intact
Appreciation of it; while morning is still and before the body
Is changed by the faces of evening.
A major step forward from The Tennis Court Oath, Ashbery comes fully into his own with Rivers and Mountains. Two of his early masterpieces are here: the long poems "Clepsydra" and "The Skaters."
February 7, 2020
After the experimental The Tennis Court Oath and nearly giving up writing after all the negative reviews it got, Ashbury came back with a near perfect collection of 12 poems. Much more focused then his other work so far. Highlights ~ "these lacustrine cities" "civilization and its discontents" "if the birds knew" "the ecclesiast" "a blessing in disguise" "clepsydra" and "the skaters"
January 1, 2021
Last book of 2020. I like how The Skaters seems like a precursor to Flowchart.
December 9, 2016
This early collection is my first exposure to John Ashbery, and after researching the mixed critical acceptance of his work throughout his career, I feel a little less overwhelmed by my initial reaction to some of the poems within. Ashbery is well known for his surrealist style, and this definitely comes across in poems such as The Recent Past, and A Blessing in Disguise. Most reviews of this collection heap a lot of praise on the long-form poem that takes up nearly half of this volume, The Skaters, but I personally found a resonance within the shorter pieces, two in particular. Into the Dusk-Charged Air, a playful list poem, barrels through a variety of different descriptions of rivers in what feels almost like a tongue-in-cheek celebration of the language. Then there is The Ecclesiast, a poem about embracing the impermanence and inconsequentiality of life, and which read as a direct response (or rebuttal) to Kind David from Ecclesiastes 1, who proclaimed “Utterly meaningless!/Everything is meaningless.” A great collection from the early part of a long and celebrated career, Rivers and Mountains has me looking forward to delving into more of Ashbery's work.
November 14, 2008
Maybe it isn't right to love a book just for one poem. And it's not that I don't love all the poems here, even with the style for my ear to be too close to that dense poetics of The Tennis Court Oath. However, then there's "The Skaters." Ashbery in long form, in long unending meditation, is the big mind that makes me trust everything he writes. I understand that of course life inundates every person. But Ashbery has a way of making this tragic and enervating and provocative and hopeful all at once.
July 16, 2019
And be endless in the discovery of the declamatory nature of the distance traveled.
It has taken me a while to dare to approach poems of some length in a second language. This collection is dominated by Ashbery's Clepsydra, the narrators journey through one day, reflecting in long, abstract sentences about time, space, and purpose.
The sentences are of a precision and intensity that, with my limited experience, I can only compare to Rilke's Duino Elegies or Celan's Engführung.
It has taken me a while to dare to approach poems of some length in a second language. This collection is dominated by Ashbery's Clepsydra, the narrators journey through one day, reflecting in long, abstract sentences about time, space, and purpose.
The sentences are of a precision and intensity that, with my limited experience, I can only compare to Rilke's Duino Elegies or Celan's Engführung.
February 9, 2010
Having just read The Skaters again a couple times I'd like five more stars please.
May 10, 2013
do I have to write a review right now
Read
November 11, 2023…
A match recedes, slowly, into the night.
The academy of the future is
Opening its doors and willing
…
The Ecclesiast
"Worse than the sunflower," she had said.
But the new dimension of truth had only recently
Burst in on us. Now it was to be condemned.
And in vagrant shadow her mothball truth is eaten.
In cool, like-it-or-not shadow the humdrum is consumed.
Tired housewives begat it some decades ago,
A small piece of truth that is it was honey to the lips
Was also millions of miles from filling the place reserved for it.
You see how honey crumbles your universe
Which seems like an institution – how many walls?
Then everything, in her belief, was to be submerged
And soon. There was no life you could live out to its end
And no attitude which, in the end, would save you.
The monkish and the frivolous alike were to be trapped
in death's capacious claw
But listen while I tell you about the wallpaper –
There was a key to everything in that oak forest
But a sad one. Ever since childhood there
Has been this special meaning to everything.
You smile at your friend's joke, but only later, through tears.
…
A match recedes, slowly, into the night.
The academy of the future is
Opening its doors and willing
…
The Ecclesiast
"Worse than the sunflower," she had said.
But the new dimension of truth had only recently
Burst in on us. Now it was to be condemned.
And in vagrant shadow her mothball truth is eaten.
In cool, like-it-or-not shadow the humdrum is consumed.
Tired housewives begat it some decades ago,
A small piece of truth that is it was honey to the lips
Was also millions of miles from filling the place reserved for it.
You see how honey crumbles your universe
Which seems like an institution – how many walls?
Then everything, in her belief, was to be submerged
And soon. There was no life you could live out to its end
And no attitude which, in the end, would save you.
The monkish and the frivolous alike were to be trapped
in death's capacious claw
But listen while I tell you about the wallpaper –
There was a key to everything in that oak forest
But a sad one. Ever since childhood there
Has been this special meaning to everything.
You smile at your friend's joke, but only later, through tears.
…
November 13, 2017
"It is time now for a general understanding of
The meaning of all this." *audience laughs*
Around the time this was published, Ashbery said one should distinguish between obscurity and impenetrability, suggesting that his poems belong to the former category. I am uncertain that this is actually the case with something like "The Skaters," the famous long-poem that takes up the majority of these pages, written at least as much against critics as for readers; however, reading (and hearing the author read) some of the shorter pieces within (in particular, These Lacustrine Cities) was a pleasure on multiple levels - and when I set aside standard interpretive tools, I found in many cases there was still plenty of substance remaining.
The intellect, the emotions, and the memory are all engaged to varying degrees as you make your way through this collection. It is here I am able to begin to appreciate Ashbery's art, even if (like with Proust, Stevens, or Pound) I don't share the philosophy underpinning its genesis.
The meaning of all this." *audience laughs*
Around the time this was published, Ashbery said one should distinguish between obscurity and impenetrability, suggesting that his poems belong to the former category. I am uncertain that this is actually the case with something like "The Skaters," the famous long-poem that takes up the majority of these pages, written at least as much against critics as for readers; however, reading (and hearing the author read) some of the shorter pieces within (in particular, These Lacustrine Cities) was a pleasure on multiple levels - and when I set aside standard interpretive tools, I found in many cases there was still plenty of substance remaining.
The intellect, the emotions, and the memory are all engaged to varying degrees as you make your way through this collection. It is here I am able to begin to appreciate Ashbery's art, even if (like with Proust, Stevens, or Pound) I don't share the philosophy underpinning its genesis.
Read
August 12, 2022An exquisite collection as always but I’m reeling from the last long poem, The Skaters which is momentous and vulnerable and Johnly wise but also includes lines such as The day was gloves.
love too for Clepsydra, Civilisation and Its Discontents, A Blessing in Disguise, The Ecclesiast.
Fine vapors escape from whatever is doing the living.
The night is cold and delicate and full of angels
Pounding down the living. The factories are all lit up,
The chime goes unheard.
We are together at last, though far apart.
love too for Clepsydra, Civilisation and Its Discontents, A Blessing in Disguise, The Ecclesiast.
Fine vapors escape from whatever is doing the living.
The night is cold and delicate and full of angels
Pounding down the living. The factories are all lit up,
The chime goes unheard.
We are together at last, though far apart.
September 15, 2025
To be young (is to be sad). Not as difficult as his reputation suggests, he even mentions it in one of the poems. Think of it more as an onslaught of images, that gradually coalesce into something richer, having done some of the work yourself to piece it together. His bits about the space between cause & effect getting smaller, as lines receding into the vanishing point, will stick with me forever.
Read
July 5, 2022Prolongations of our reluctance to approach, but also
Fine days on whose memorable successions of events
We shall be ever afterwards tempted to dwell.
It was the long way back out of sadness
Of that first meeting: a half-triumph, an imaginary feeling
I do not expect constant attendance, knowing myself insufficient for your present demands
For it is you I am parodying,
Your invisible denials.
Fine days on whose memorable successions of events
We shall be ever afterwards tempted to dwell.
It was the long way back out of sadness
Of that first meeting: a half-triumph, an imaginary feeling
I do not expect constant attendance, knowing myself insufficient for your present demands
For it is you I am parodying,
Your invisible denials.
July 27, 2020
Aw, I really liked this one. A bit better than his streamier stuff from the first two books. I’m glad to be getting into Ashbery.
August 12, 2020
Skaters!!!
What a couple great epic poems to conclude this selection of Ashbery's work. I thoroughly enjoyed this introduction to a modern American poet.
What a couple great epic poems to conclude this selection of Ashbery's work. I thoroughly enjoyed this introduction to a modern American poet.
July 5, 2021
Fog bank and patting the mouth corners with a napkin
October 5, 2021
As usual , ashbery in his uniqueness and merciless poems , mystic and mentally out of my league
February 16, 2023
A blessing in disguise
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March 20, 2023and so it shall be all our lives: only, from this moment on, nothing will ever be the same again.
July 31, 2007
One of my favorite Ashbery books, I have the Ecco Press edition of this. I love the poem using all the rivers from a map, and the sense that naming places is a poetic act all by itself. very amusing, and light-hearted poems, a little off. masterpiece.
July 31, 2007
This is one of the great poetry books of the 1960s, featuring the major long poem "The Skaters" plus a wonderful list poem "Into the Dusk Charged Air."
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August 18, 2018Beautiful, can't get over the last lines of "These Lacustrine Cities" and the two long poems "Clepsydra" and "The Skaters."
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews