Another Two Cents on Ashbery

A poem by Daniel Brown


How primitive his poetry is!
Primitive in the sense
that a poem of his is less a vertebrate, 
or even a mollusk,
than a loose community of cells.
Not that he's not a pinnacle in spots
(a Selected Lines would be must reading).                
In sum, a problem poet:
supreme in a lower thing.

 

DANIEL BROWN's latest book is What More? (2015). His work has appeared in PoetryThe New Criterion, and Parnassus.
 

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