John Ashbery and English Poetry

Ben Hickman studied at University College, London and the University of Kent, and has published on the New York School, the New American Poetry, contemporary British poetry and John Clare. He currently teaches at the University of Kent.

Abbreviations; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Lost words: Donne, Marvell and Ashberyan metaphor; 2. 'The music of all present': Ashberyan description and the presence of John Clare; 3. 'Always articulating these preludes': landscape, Wordsworth, 'A Wave' and after; 4. 'These decibels': Eliot, Ashbery, and allusion; 5. The first and most important influence: Ashbery and Auden; Bibliography; Index.

An individual and authoritative reading of one of the great poets of our time. In discussing Ashbery, Hickman also brilliantly evokes the English poets who influenced him, from Donne through Clare and the moderns. Hickman writes with clarity and depth of knowledge. He is rooted in the American yet also, and deeply, in the British and Continental traditions which most matter to an understanding of Ashbery's and most post-Modern American and British poetry. He relocates Ashbery's poems within the zones where they actually belong and where they tell us they belong. -- Michael Schmidt, Professor of Poetry, University of Glasgow An individual and authoritative reading of one of the great poets of our time. In discussing Ashbery, Hickman also brilliantly evokes the English poets who influenced him, from Donne through Clare and the moderns. Hickman writes with clarity and depth of knowledge. He is rooted in the American yet also, and deeply, in the British and Continental traditions which most matter to an understanding of Ashbery's and most post-Modern American and British poetry. He relocates Ashbery's poems within the zones where they actually belong and where they tell us they belong.