Your Name Here : Poems by John Ashbery

In his twentieth collection of poetry, John Ashbery continues to examine the themes that have preoccupied him of late: age and its inevitable losses, memories of childhood, the transforming magic of dreams in daily living. "Why do I tell you these things? You are not even here," he asks in the opening poem, seemingly addressed to an absent friend. Fortunately, he finds plenty of reasons to "tell things," chief among them the pleasure of attempting to offer the reader "a completely new set of objects," in Wallace Stevens's phrase. Through a blizzard of conflicting styles and tones of voice, the poems take shape as though through an iridescent shower of snow in a shaken paperweight.
Your Name Here (a title suggested by bullfight posters hawked to tourists in Spain, with a blank space so they can fill in their own name as terero) offers souvenirs to the reader, inviting him or her to "personalize" the poems with their own associations and memories.

After his take on kids' adventure stories in his Girls on the Run (FSG, 1999), Ashbery returns to and renews his own masterful voice in this sad, funny, and beautiful book.

About the Author
John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, in 1927 and educated at Harvard and Columbia Universities. He is Charles P. Stevenson, Jr., Professor of Language and Literature at Bard College and lives in New York City and Hudson, New York.

 

OxfordBooks.com and Dr. John Holleman, In Association With Amazon.com
Oxford, MS
 

 

 

 

Amazon.com is pleased to have Dr. John Holleman in the family of Amazon.com associates. We've agreed to ship products and provide customer service for orders we receive through special links on Dr. Holleman's online bookseller.
Amazon.com associates list selected books and music in an editorial context that helps you make the right choice. We encourage you to shop at Dr. Holleman's bookseller often to see what new items they've selected for you.
Thank you for shopping with an Amazon.com associate.
Sincerely,
Jeff Bezos, President Amazon.com