A review by moonpix
A Wave by John Ashbery

3.0

Most of the longer poems and prose poems here did not work for me. My impression from this collection is that Ashbery is someone who plays around with form without having all that specific a point of view to ground the experiments in. But maybe that's my bias for less airy (and generally more depressing) poetry showing through lol. And there are still some poems here worth reading and rereading, my personal favorites being At North Farm, When the Sun Went Down, Just Walking Around, and More Pleasant Adventures. The final, titular poem reminded me of André Breton’s Nadja, and so I was not surprised to learn that surrealist art was one of his early influences. Well, maybe his art criticism is better.

“So a reflected image of oneself
Manages to stay alive through the darkest times, a period
Of unprecedented frost, during which we get up each morning
And go about our business as usual.”