The Mooring of Starting Out

by Ashbery, John

• ISBN13: 9780880015479
• ISBN10: 0880015470
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-09-14
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

Most critics would agree that John Ashbery is one of 20th-century American poetry's finest voices. Perhaps his most admired book is Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, a culmination of themes, styles, and forms with which the poet experimented over the course of two decades. Now, the poet's devoted readers can trace his development through the first five books of his poetry, collected here in one handy volume. The Mooring of Starting Out represents Ashbery's work from 1956 through 1972, comprising Some Trees, his first book; The Tennis Court Oath, written while he was living in Paris.

Table of Contents

Two Scenes	p. 3
Popular Songs	p. 4
Eclogue	p. 6
The Instruction Manual	p. 8
The Grapevine	p. 11
A Boy	p. 12
Glazunoviana	p. 13
The Hero	p. 14
Poem	p. 15
Album Leaf	p. 17
The Picture of Little J.A. in a Prospect of Flowers	p. 18
Pantoum	p. 20
Grand Abacus	p. 22
The Mythological Poet	p. 23
Sonnet	p. 25
Chaos	p. 26
The Orioles	p. 27
The Young Son	p. 29
The Thinnest Shadow	p. 30
Canzone	p. 31
Errors	p. 34
Illustration	p. 35
Some Trees	p. 37
Hotel Dauphin	p. 38
The Painter	p. 40
And You Know	p. 42
He	p. 44
Meditations of a Parrot	p. 46
A Long Novel	p. 47
The Way They Took	p. 49
Sonnet	p. 50
The Pied Piper	p. 51
Answering a Question in the Mountains	p. 52
A Pastoral	p. 54
Le livre est sur la table	p. 56
The Tennis Court Oath	p. 61
"They Dream Only of America"	p. 63
Thoughts of a Young Girl	p. 64
America	p. 65
Two Sonnets	p. 71
To Redoute	p. 73
Night	p. 74
"How Much Longer Will I Be Able to Inhabit in Divine Sepulcher..."	p. 78
Rain	p. 82
A White Paper	p. 87
Leaving the Atocha Station	p. 88
White Roses	p. 91
The Suspended Life	p. 92
A Life Drama	p. 95
Our Youth	p. 98
The Ticket	p. 100
An Additional Poem	p. 101
Measles	p. 102
Faust	p. 104
The Lozenges	p. 106
The Ascetic Sensualists	p. 108
Landscape	p. 113
A Last World	p. 114
The New Realism	p. 118
The Unknown Travelers	p. 123
Europe	p. 124
To the Same Degree	p. 151
The Passive Preacher	p. 153
The Shower	p. 155
Idaho	p. 156
These Lacustrine Cities	p. 163
Rivers and Mountains	p. 165
Last Month	p. 168
Civilization and Its Discontents	p. 169
If the Birds Knew	p. 171
Into the Dusk-Charged Air	p. 173
The Ecclesiast	p. 178
The Recent Past	p. 180
The Thousand Islands	p. 181
A Blessing in Disguise	p. 184
Clepsydra	p. 186
The Skaters	p. 194
The Task	p. 227
Spring Day	p. 228
Plainness in Diversity	p. 230
Soonest Mended	p. 231
Summer	p. 234
It Was Raining in the Capital	p. 235
Variations, Calypso and Fugue on a Theme of Ella Wheeler Wilcox	p. 238
Song	p. 244
Decoy	p. 245
Evening in the Country	p. 247
For John Clare	p. 249
French Poems	p. 251
The Double Dream of Spring	p. 254
Rural Objects	p. 256
Years of Indiscretion	p. 259
Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape	p. 260
Sunrise in Suburbia	p. 262
Definition of Blue	p. 266
Parergon	p. 268
The Hod Carrier	p. 270
An Outing	p. 273
Some Words	p. 274
Young Man with Letter	p. 279
Clouds	p. 280
The Bungalows	p. 283
The Chateau Hardware	p. 286
Sortes Vergilianae	p. 287
Fragment	p. 290
Author's Notes	p. 306
The New Spirit	p. 309
The System	p. 341
The Recital	p. 376
Title Index	p. 385
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Two Scenes

1.

We see us as we truly behave:

From every corner comes a distinctive offering.

The train comes bearing joy;

The sparks it strikes illuminate the table.

Destiny guides the water-pilot, and it is destiny.

For long we hadn't heard so much news, such noise.

The day was warm and pleasant.

"We see you in your hair,

Air resting around the tips of mountains."

2.

A fine rain anoints the canal machinery.

This is perhaps a day of general honesty

Without example in the world's history

Though the fames are not of a singular authority

And indeed are dry as poverty.

Terrific units are on an old man

In the blue shadow of some paint cans

As laughing cadets say, "In the evening

Everything has a schedule, if you can find out what it is."

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Mooring Of Starting Out by John Ashbery Copyright © 2003 by John Ashbery
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.