John Tranter site - John Ashbery interviewed by John Tranter, 1988

For Gary Sullivan, about Ashbery's narrative impulse in his second book:

"One that seems to give people the most trouble is a long poem called 'Europe', which... I cannibalised a book for teenage girls published in England during World War One, that I found in a bookstall along the Seine in Paris, called Beryl of the Biplane . Ah... and the only idea, if there is one, in the poem, is that this poem contains a lot of things that can be found in Europe. But of course they can also be found anywhere else.