Reviews for Planisphere

The average rating for Planisphere based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-02-07 00:00:00 Rowan Lawrence For me Ashbery is more demanding than any poet I read. Sometimes--often--I simply don't get it. I know the fault is mine rather than his. Because I'm aware of Harold Bloom's judgement that Ashbery is one of the two poetic geniuses writing today (Anne Carson the other) I'm confident there's gold to be panned in his poetry. But it's mind-breaking labor for me, and I wasn't able to find the connection with Planisphere. Donald Hall's memoir Unpacking the Boxes relates an anecdote illustrating the quick skill of Ashbery. Hall edited the literary magazine Harvard Advocate. Finding an issue a half-page short, he asked Ashbery if he had anything they could use. After more encouragement and pleas he "slouched away" to his room and returned 15 minutes later with a poem to be printed. Forty years later he admitted to Hall he'd gone to his room and written it. Lacking Hall's poetic expertise, I was marooned in incomprehension. Hoping to gain some insight, I looked up planisphere to see it's a map showing the appearance of the heavens at a specific time and place. That didn't help. I remained adrift in this firmament of 99 poems, as lost as Bowie's Major Tom or Elton John's Rocketman. I'm already making plans to reread, to make a slower and more systematic scan through these stellar pages. Ashbery requires the steady, sharp focus of the Hubble.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-02-03 00:00:00 Mary Pigott This is a wonderful book of poems which weave meditation, humor, and unpretentious language used in a way that makes the ear perk up to catch what it thinks it almost missed. Example: the last lines of "The Seventh Chihuahua". "It was all about being on the way. /There were no addresses, only heavenly wings./Did I say the stars will take care of us? I know/// it sounds funny, but that's the way it is. The poem had been on the way to saying something, having started with "This association will tide you over/ until the next blue January wind comes along / looking for space, and death. What's wonderful is that throughout the book, there is plenty of space to think about -- whether losing memory, slipping into old age, or simply find a way as in "Uptick" to address ways of preserving time. "Therefore poetry dissolves in / briliant moisture and reads us / to us.// A faint notion. Too many words,/ but precious.