{"product_id":"other-traditions-hardcover","title":"Other Traditions - Hardcover","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eJohn Ashbery\u003c\/b\u003e (Author), \u003cb\u003eStephanie Burt\u003c\/b\u003e (Foreword by)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"An entertaining and shrewd little book ... Ashbery is an accomplished raconteur.\" \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e--Charles Simic, \u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe most influential American poet of his generation appraises the lesser-known writers who shaped his own confounding, infinitely inventive work.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eJohn Ashbery was the quintessential \"difficult poet.\" When asked to explain his work, he typically responded by insisting that his poetry was its own explanation. Fittingly, then, when he was invited to deliver the Norton Lectures at Harvard in 1989, Ashbery declined to spell out what he put on the page. Instead, he offered rapt audiences a tour of his influences, the authors he turned to as a \"jumpstart for times when the batteries have run down.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe poets in Ashbery's personal canon--John Clare, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Raymond Roussel, John Wheelwright, Laura Riding, and David Schubert--were all tragic figures in their own way, plagued by mental illness or poverty, ridiculed or barely recognized in their own lives, and in some cases, all but forgotten today. More importantly for Ashbery, each wrote poetry that somehow defies the reader. Clare's sometimes-monotonous naturalism, Roussel's exhausting maze of parenthetical clauses, and Wheelwright's eccentric Anglican mysticism do not invite casual reading. But under Ashbery's tutelage, we experience the idiosyncratic brilliance of these \"other traditions,\" discovering how they shaped not only Ashbery's poetics but also the broader trajectory of twentieth-century literature, from surrealism to New Criticism. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWith inimitable charm, wit, and erudition, the lectures collected in \u003ci\u003eOther Traditions\u003c\/i\u003e elevate the imperfect and peculiar, affirming the literary virtues of Ashbery's difficult predecessors. The result is a revealing self-portrait of one of the giants of American poetry, if only through a convex mirror.\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 176\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.8 x 8.3 x 5.6 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e September 16, 2025\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43156415807551,"sku":"9780674302440","price":27.54,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0105\/8226\/1823\/files\/lbggBSDOIc9780674302440.webp?v=1776972104","url":"https:\/\/dhlswag.com\/products\/other-traditions-hardcover","provider":"BBB","version":"1.0","type":"link"}