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*John Asbhery. The Double Dream of Spring. 1970. 94 pp.
It strikes me that Ashbery didn't learn that many new tricks since 1970. The exception being his ability to reach a wider public with Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror. All of Ashbery is really here in the double dream, its title taken from a Chirico painting. The long "Fragment" would be repeated in countless other texts. The sestina about Popeye, the homage to a popular 19th century poet, the use of certain prose registers, the rhymed translation of Cravan... this book offers a great variety of tricks.
Oh, is that where the Popeye sestina was published?
ResponderEliminarIt came up on a list devoted to experimental comics that I'm on a while back. The list members loved the poem (someone posted it in its entirety), and were particularly impressed that Ashbery's knowledge of Popeye was not limited to the cartoon version, but the comic strip.