22 may 2003

Also the way Ron makes Auden the synechdoche, focal point of all that is (was) British. This flattens out the work of a multidimensional poet. Auden's sestinas that I've always liked, for example. There a bit of Ashbery already in the ludic side of Auden. O'Hara is on record admiring Auden as well. And Koch and Ashbery were not published by mainstream New York publishers, but by Grove Press and the like. Sure, Ashbery has always been the favorite of the Blooms and the Vendlers of the world, but that is not his fault. He is more French than British, as Auden himself notes in the preface to the Yale Younger Series volume.

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