Arts
John Ashbery is a remarkably exciting poet who pushes the reader to the frontiers of their own imagination through a constant challenge of vivid, shifting imagery. Reading Ashbery is an exercise in attention and openness - one must be entirely present with the poem and their own experience of it, as surprising language creates a multifaceted, fractal narrative. However, by staying awake (not slipping into an unconscious mode of reading, as we so often do) the reader manages to keep the thread of the story and reaches the end of the poem stimulated and awestruck.