A Wave

75 USD

Date

1984

Category

Poetry

Description

Over forty poems in verse and prose make up A Wave, John Ashbery's tenth collection. The title poem is a twenty-page meditation on change, loss and adjustment; it is a major poem that takes place alongside 'Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror and 'Litany' as a challenging masterwork of modern American poetry.

John Ashbery describes the way in which the rhythm of childhood memories permeates the verse of his long poem, 'A Wave':

'Waves have always been somehow embedded in my mind because I spent a great deal of my childhood on the edge of one of the great lakes, Lake Ontario, where my grandparents lived. They're not as big as the ones on the ocean but they do get to be pretty big and you hear them all day long, and their rhythm is something that has always been with me and keeps erupting in the poetry.'
(talking to David Sexton, The Sunday Times, 16th June 1983)

Excerpt

An object of curiosity to some, But you are too preoccupied By the secret smudge in the back of your soul To say much, and wander around, Smiling to yourself and others It gets to be kind of lonely But at the same time off-putting Counterproductive, as you realize once again That the longest way is the most efficient way The one that looped among islands, and You always seemed to be traveling in a circle. And now that the end is near The segments of the trip swing open like an orange There is light in there, and mysterious and food. Come see it. Come not for me but it. But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other.