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Planisphere
This is a major collection from a modern American poet celebrated for his humour and versatility. He is a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Circle of Book Critics Award and numerous other accolades.
- GenresPoetry
160 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2009
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113 people want to read
About the author
John Ashbery
290 books479 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 - 22 of 22 reviews
August 24, 2011
For me Ashbery is more demanding than any poet I read. Sometimes--often--I simply don't get it. I know the fault is mine rather than his. Because I'm aware of Harold Bloom's judgement that Ashbery is one of the two poetic geniuses writing today (Anne Carson the other) I'm confident there's gold to be panned in his poetry. But it's mind-breaking labor for me, and I wasn't able to find the connection with Planisphere.
Donald Hall's memoir Unpacking the Boxes relates an anecdote illustrating the quick skill of Ashbery. Hall edited the literary magazine Harvard Advocate. Finding an issue a half-page short, he asked Ashbery if he had anything they could use. After more encouragement and pleas he "slouched away" to his room and returned 15 minutes later with a poem to be printed. Forty years later he admitted to Hall he'd gone to his room and written it.
Lacking Hall's poetic expertise, I was marooned in incomprehension. Hoping to gain some insight, I looked up planisphere to see it's a map showing the appearance of the heavens at a specific time and place. That didn't help. I remained adrift in this firmament of 99 poems, as lost as Bowie's Major Tom or Elton John's Rocketman. I'm already making plans to reread, to make a slower and more systematic scan through these stellar pages. Ashbery requires the steady, sharp focus of the Hubble.
Donald Hall's memoir Unpacking the Boxes relates an anecdote illustrating the quick skill of Ashbery. Hall edited the literary magazine Harvard Advocate. Finding an issue a half-page short, he asked Ashbery if he had anything they could use. After more encouragement and pleas he "slouched away" to his room and returned 15 minutes later with a poem to be printed. Forty years later he admitted to Hall he'd gone to his room and written it.
Lacking Hall's poetic expertise, I was marooned in incomprehension. Hoping to gain some insight, I looked up planisphere to see it's a map showing the appearance of the heavens at a specific time and place. That didn't help. I remained adrift in this firmament of 99 poems, as lost as Bowie's Major Tom or Elton John's Rocketman. I'm already making plans to reread, to make a slower and more systematic scan through these stellar pages. Ashbery requires the steady, sharp focus of the Hubble.
February 4, 2010
This is a wonderful book of poems which weave meditation, humor, and unpretentious language used in a way that makes the ear perk up to catch what it thinks it almost missed. Example: the last lines of "The Seventh Chihuahua". "It was all about being on the way. /There were no addresses, only heavenly wings./Did I say the stars will take care of us? I know/// it sounds funny, but that's the way it is.
The poem had been on the way to saying something, having started with "This association will tide you over/ until the next blue January wind comes along / looking for space, and death.
What's wonderful is that throughout the book, there is plenty of space to think about -- whether losing memory, slipping into old age, or simply find a way as in "Uptick" to address ways of preserving time.
"Therefore poetry dissolves in / briliant moisture and reads us / to us.// A faint notion. Too many words,/
but precious.
The poem had been on the way to saying something, having started with "This association will tide you over/ until the next blue January wind comes along / looking for space, and death.
What's wonderful is that throughout the book, there is plenty of space to think about -- whether losing memory, slipping into old age, or simply find a way as in "Uptick" to address ways of preserving time.
"Therefore poetry dissolves in / briliant moisture and reads us / to us.// A faint notion. Too many words,/
but precious.
June 26, 2024
Odd little collection of late(r) Ashbery that feels a little less frenetic but not without some anxiety. Flatter than a lot of his best work, but still with some surprising turns. Some good examples here of later Ashbery’s poetics of things in themselves as they — things that populate his poems, existential terrain, actual physical space, etc
February 2, 2010
This is Ashbery at his most self-indulgently dadaist. A dreadful book--perhaps his worst. It's hard to see what admirers of such thoughtful early and middle-period books as _Rivers and Mountains_, _Three Poems_, and _Houseboat Days_ could find to celebrate in this collection. Even in the context of the late work, which on the whole suggests a decline in artistic seriousness, _Planisphere_ stands out with its radically discontinuous, astonishingly forgettable writing. (The most interesting poem is easily "They Knew What They Wanted," a collage of film titles, each of which begins with the word "They.")
The final line is telling: "'Love me anyway,' he said." Yes, if we're going to love Ashbery, we're going to love him not for this book, but despite it.
The final line is telling: "'Love me anyway,' he said." Yes, if we're going to love Ashbery, we're going to love him not for this book, but despite it.
December 27, 2020
I really did not understand these, and I suspect they're not among his best work, but there were some highlights -- mostly a sentence here and there. I found it helps to read them in different (mental) voices. This review sums up the appeal well: https://jacket2.org/reviews/ongoing-p...
August 30, 2019
After I while I gave up trying to understand what these poems were about, and just enjoyed the sound of them - which I think was a good decision.
Edit - upgrading this to four stars because it's stayed with me, and while I didn't always enjoy his style I was certainly impressed by it...it's maybe expanded my sense of what writing can do slightly? If that's not over-dramatising it.
Edit - upgrading this to four stars because it's stayed with me, and while I didn't always enjoy his style I was certainly impressed by it...it's maybe expanded my sense of what writing can do slightly? If that's not over-dramatising it.
April 1, 2010
From my review at The Critical Flame:
“Perhaps because his themes are, in fact, so familiar — particularly where memory, loneliness, and nostalgia overlap without a restraining sense of irony — there is also a numbness, an almost familiar contempt throughout the collection. This is not wholly a flaw of temperament though; the impression is certainly intentional in a number of poems. It is evoked most directly in lines like “Just as the day could use another hour / so I could use another idea,” from “Breathlike,” and in poems such as “River of the Canoefish,” where first the thriving new species is experienced as “tumbled, tumescent, tinted all the colors of the rainbow [. . .:] a swelling scumbled mass, rife with incident;” until, in a jarring turn at the end of the poem, they hold no more music or allure, “Shall we gather at the river? On second thought, let’s not.” They are made mundane with familiarity, not worth the effort of discussion in their dismissal. One can never be sure, but perhaps this, like so much of his work, is a poem about his own poetry; or, rather, it is a poem expressing his own struggle between themes of nostalgia, of tired old age, and the vivacity of his own poetry.”
Read the rest!
http://criticalflame.org/verse/0110_p...
“Perhaps because his themes are, in fact, so familiar — particularly where memory, loneliness, and nostalgia overlap without a restraining sense of irony — there is also a numbness, an almost familiar contempt throughout the collection. This is not wholly a flaw of temperament though; the impression is certainly intentional in a number of poems. It is evoked most directly in lines like “Just as the day could use another hour / so I could use another idea,” from “Breathlike,” and in poems such as “River of the Canoefish,” where first the thriving new species is experienced as “tumbled, tumescent, tinted all the colors of the rainbow [. . .:] a swelling scumbled mass, rife with incident;” until, in a jarring turn at the end of the poem, they hold no more music or allure, “Shall we gather at the river? On second thought, let’s not.” They are made mundane with familiarity, not worth the effort of discussion in their dismissal. One can never be sure, but perhaps this, like so much of his work, is a poem about his own poetry; or, rather, it is a poem expressing his own struggle between themes of nostalgia, of tired old age, and the vivacity of his own poetry.”
Read the rest!
http://criticalflame.org/verse/0110_p...
January 18, 2011
In general, Ashbery delights me, but I found the poems in this book to be somewhat dry and random, without the clever whimsy that I love so much about Ashbery. The poems are shorter than his usual, which one might think would make for easier reading, but it's tough to string more than 2 or 3 sentences of his together to create any kind of meaning. What I liked most about the poems are the titles, because a large number of them are interesting and quirky; it's just that I would like the book a lot better if I could see any kind of relationship between the titles and the poems themselves. I've got the nagging feeling that I could steal any of the titles for poems of my own and no one would connect them to an Ashbery poem, because the poems don't really hang on them. It's a long book, with poem after poem which feels like chance after chance, but I can count on one hand the poems that gave me any kind of emotional reaction. I'm not giving up on thinking of Ashbery as an awesome poet, but I don't feel bad about not loving this book.
April 4, 2013
I had a harder time deciphering many of these poems than I did with Ashbery's earlier work, and while I'm not one to enjoy something less because I understand it less, I do feel the lack of cohesiveness to the work as a whole turned me off from it more. Typically, I don't take much issue with poetry collections that lack a theme (or even a few themes), but perhaps cohesiveness is what I've come to expect from Ashbery, and this book just doesn't deliver that. Not a horrible collection, by any means, but it definitely didn't have the punch and depth I got out of The Tennis Court Oath, Rivers and Mountains, The Double Dream of Spring, etc.
In short, this is probably a book only suitable for the "serious" Ashbery reader. Definitely not where someone should start with his work.
In short, this is probably a book only suitable for the "serious" Ashbery reader. Definitely not where someone should start with his work.
September 21, 2014
Ashbery is like a tire pump for our flat language. He reinflates dead words with new meaning.
Individually, his poems challenge us to work through our thoughts, associations, dreams...and to allow ourselves to be changed. In a book-length collection like Planisphere, there's an awful lot of challenge and change. And after a while, the disorienting Ashbery style starts to feel like bloat.
The trick to reading Ashbery with pleasure and a sense of purpose, therefore, is to read him in small increments. Otherwise, he loses his power.
Individually, his poems challenge us to work through our thoughts, associations, dreams...and to allow ourselves to be changed. In a book-length collection like Planisphere, there's an awful lot of challenge and change. And after a while, the disorienting Ashbery style starts to feel like bloat.
The trick to reading Ashbery with pleasure and a sense of purpose, therefore, is to read him in small increments. Otherwise, he loses his power.
December 3, 2016
Taken individually, there is nothing really wrong with any of these poems, but their invariability and their in- and un- distinguish/ed/able sameness does become oppressive over the length of the collection. (And is it a measure of its straining after cleverness or its surrender to exhaustion that the poems are collected alphabetically by title)?
I was tempted to go back and count the number of times Ashbery uses the word "besides" as a trite means to a rhetorical turn that will yield another three or five unnecessary lines, but I finally couldn't make myself do it.
I was tempted to go back and count the number of times Ashbery uses the word "besides" as a trite means to a rhetorical turn that will yield another three or five unnecessary lines, but I finally couldn't make myself do it.
August 8, 2010
truly unimpressed, untouched, downright bored by this collection. i shoulda known not to start with his most recent stuff, blast me. being a legend, i expected ashbery to grab me by the short and curlies and never let me go. while i will admit i did not give it the most thorough once-over, as far as i can tell, this doesn't merit thoroughness. will give him another chance, but the younger version of himself, clearly.
April 29, 2010
Planisphere: the world condensed to a flat plane of a poem. Indeed, a perfect title.
Ashbery at his most sentimental, to my mind, may not be the best thing. Still, he's an exciting poet in that there's a quality of language that a child discovers before it becomes useful. His playground is not as mysterious as it once was, but just as large, and just as fun.
Ashbery at his most sentimental, to my mind, may not be the best thing. Still, he's an exciting poet in that there's a quality of language that a child discovers before it becomes useful. His playground is not as mysterious as it once was, but just as large, and just as fun.
April 16, 2012
Not my favorite Ashbery, this collection seems a little more tired and less humorous than some of his others, less playful, sadder overall. Still, I particularly liked "I Didn't Know What Time It Was", "More of What Happened", "River of the Canoefish", "The Seventh Chihuahua", "Tessera", "They Knew What They Wanted", and "Spooks Run Wild".
March 22, 2010
I'm being a bit harsh by offering only two stars. If this was someone else's book, maybe I'd give it three. But my expectations of Ashbery are so high. This is the weakest Ashbery book I've read, at least on first reading. Maybe other things will unfold for me on a subsequent reading....
Read
January 4, 2010I still haven't found my way into Ashbery (except for Three Poems), so maybe I'll try the new book, yet again.
February 17, 2010
I think I lost this book somewhere, or it is in a big ass box...
June 23, 2010
I love Ashbery and will follow him anywhere. But--
I'll keep it simple: I like his earlier work much better.
I'll keep it simple: I like his earlier work much better.
Read
May 1, 2011Mostly impenetrable.
August 19, 2012
read it on a long plane ride, pretty perfect.
December 18, 2015
Just go reread The Double Dream of Spring or The Tennis Court Oath instead.
October 4, 2016
SIX WORD REVIEW: Appreciated the straightforward prose of it.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews