As We Know

Dating from one of the most studied creative periods of John Ashbery?s career, a groundbreaking collection showcasing his signature polyphonic poem ?Litany? First published in 1979, four years after Ashbery?s masterpiece Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, the poems in As We Know represent the great American poet writing at the peak of his experimental powers. The book?s flagship poem, the seventy-page ?Litany,? remains one of the most exciting and challenging of Ashbery?s career. Presented in two facing columns, the poem asks to be read as independent but countervailing monologues, creating a dialogue of the private and the public, the human and the divine, the real and the unreal?a wild and beautiful conversation that contains multitudes. ? As We Know also collects some of Ashbery?s most witty, self-reflexive interrogations of poetry itself, including ?Late Echo? and ?Five Pedantic Pieces? (?An idea I had and talked about / Became the things I do?), as well as a wry, laugh-out-loud call-and-response sequence of one-line poems on Ashbery?s defining subject: the writing of poetry (?I Had Thought Things Were Going Along Well / But I was mistaken?). Perhaps the most admired poem in this much-discussed volume is ?Tapestry,? a measured exploration of the inevitable distance that arises between art, audience, and artist, which the critic Harold Bloom called ?an ?Ode on a Grecian Urn? for our time.? ? Built of doubles, of echoes, of dualities and combinations, As We Know is the breathtaking expression of a singular American voice.