John Ashbery

"Double Shadow: Poems" By Carl Phillips Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 58 pages, $23.00 "We're not what / either of us expected, / are we?" Carl Phillips asks in his new book, Double Shadow. It's a good question, and it's one that raises another question,...

This weekend, Wesleyan University will host an array of events paying tribute to composer Alvin Lucier, who retired from the faculty in July after 40 years of teaching. Even if you aren’t familiar with Lucier’s work, you’d be challenged...

A Chicago publisher was recognized during the National Book Awards ceremony as Nikky Finney won the award for poetry for her collection "Head Off & Split," which was published by Northwestern University's Triquarterly imprint. Jesmyn Ward's "Salvage the...

Reporting from Maui — We've been batting our way through W.S. Merwin's yard for a couple hours, swatting mosquitoes in the streambed under the dark wet canopy of towering, philodendron-draped mangoes and looking at some 700 species of palm trees,...

Illuminations Arthur Rimbaud, translated from the French by John Ashbery W.W. Norton: 165 pp., $24.95 This may be the most beautiful book in the world — lighted from within and somehow embodying all forms of literature at the same time. The 44...

LENOX, Mass. -- In 1986, Elliott Carter wrote "A Celebration of Some 100 x 150 Notes," a salute to Texas on its 150th anniversary. That may appear a lot of notes to fit into a three-minute piece, but this brash bevy of 11 fanfares all fighting for...

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Jim Carroll, who died Friday of a heart attack at 60 in Manhattan, was a legend by the time he was 13. That's when the poet Ted Berrigan took him to visit Jack Kerouac, who took a look at some of Jim's writing and said, "Jim Carroll writes better prose...

Curiosities of Literature A Feast for Book Lovers John Sutherland Herman Graf/Skyhorse Publishing: 288 pp., $22.95 This totally silly literary miscellany is "loosely inspired" by Isaac D'Israeli's 1791 bestseller "The Curiosities of Literature." It is...

To call something "notes" means it isn't finished. A preparation for something else, or a work in progress. Or It means I know this is less than perfect. It means the piecemeal composition is acknowledged, should be applauded. "And to my horror (for I...

Farber on Film The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber Edited by Robert Polito Library of America: 824 pp., $40 At this year's Academy Awards, the most incongruous moment came during the "In Memoriam" roll call. Among the distinguished deceased...

Richard Poirier, a literary critic and writer who was one of the founders of the Library of America, a monumental effort to keep American literary classics in print and accessible to the reading public, died Aug. 15 at Roosevelt Hospital in New York. He...