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 Poetry, The New Criterion, and Parnassus.
 

WHAT TO READ NEXT: "'This isn’t what is sometimes called a safe space,' we wrote in our opening editorial, our one-and-only trigger warning."