Volume 22, Number 16 · October 16, 1975
Boysenberry Sherbet
By Irvin Ehrenpreis
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
by John Ashbery
Viking, 83 pp., $5.95
Departures
by Donald Justice
Atheneum, 52 pp., $2.95 (paper)
There is room in our literature for John Ashbery. The poems in his new book are seldom coherent, shapely, or intelligible; neither their sounds nor their rhythms go far to please the ear; they hardly convey the poet's character in the usual sense. Mr. Ashbery may hope to surprise us agreeably with the leaps or turns of his mind from image to insight and back again; and he may challenge us to make the brightest of these connections ourselves. But most of his work will tire nearly all his readers.
Review, 2399 words
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