Cliquer sur une vignette pour aller sur Google Books.
Chargement... Girls on the Run: A Poempar John Ashbery
Aucun Chargement...
Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. Ashbery is usually interesting, sometimes revelatory. Here his "subject" is the strange world of "outsider" artist Henry Darger and in particular Darger's bizarre life-work _In the Realms of the Unreal_. It's hard not to like this, but I don't remember anything in particular about it, either. Probably worth a re-read. It aint the best Ashbery I've read. Something about it is itchy and something else is whimsical, but joyless in its whimsy which is difficult and not pleasing and I'm trying to decide if that's the way it's supposed to be or if the whole thing's a distance from the center, so to read it is superficial. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Est contenu dans
This work is a poem loosely based on the works of the outsider artist Henry Darger (1892-1972), a recluse who toiled for decades at an enormous illustrated novel about the adventures of a plucky band of little girls. The Vivians are threatened by human tormentors, supernatural demons and cataclysmic storms; their calmer moments are passed in Edenic landscapes. Darger traced the figures from comic strips, colouring books and other ephemeral sources, filling in the backgrounds with luscious watercolour. John Ashbery's Girls on the Run creates a similar childlike world of dreamy landscapes, lurking terror and veiled eroticism. Its fractured narrative mode almost (but never quite) coalesces into a surrealist adventure story. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Discussion en coursAucunCouvertures populaires
Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)811.54Literature English (North America) American poetry 20th Century 1945-1999Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
Est-ce vous ?Devenez un(e) auteur LibraryThing. |
The poem is a dream-like surrealist sort-of narrative that evokes, in a kind-of ekphrastic way, Darger's illustrations. I really have no idea what it's about or what Ashbery was trying to achieve. I have a feeling if one read the poem a dozen times or so and was much more familiar with Darger's work than I am, some kind of tenuous meaning could be teased out. But I'm afraid I don't have the patience for that.
There is some lovely, wonderlandish language, however:
Other dreams.
Judy the petulant watered her flowers
from a sprinkling can, and the rose hurtled into bloom.
My message is it's all right to go on, it said.
Sure enough daisies and yellowbirds paired off in the peace of the moment,
which is to be lasting, but someone unearthed the old saw
on the gravel beach. "We can't use this." No but we'll go over the top
and down into the wrinkle on the other side, you'll see.
So they did what was natural and becoming and all were satisfied
and rewarded. And some
shall be excused, and other have to go and wait on the border for it.
And we should come nearer, it's warmer,
if we want to, only on that other side
which seems so far away from us, but alas is too near
almost to count. With that the hedgerow winked
good-humoredly, and they stand, they stand
unimpressed but interested perhaps
even today, and that's the gist of it.
And I did have vividly impressionistic dreams the night I finished the poem. ( )