Chinese Whispers (2003)

About book Chinese Whispers (2003)

I really wanted to like this book more, because Ashbery has written some of my favorite poems. Hearing him read once, in Cambridge in the late 1970s, was an unforgettably pleasurable experience. And of course I realize that emulating, amplifying, distilling, and somehow organizing the random buzz of everyday speech and our media saturated environment, is part of Ashbery's method. I often appreciate the results, and some of the passages in "Chinese Whispers" struck me as brilliant, alive with wit and uncanny insight. But more often, the coherence factor was just too low, and I felt defeated rather than enlightened or entertained. Oh well, maybe something to pick up again in another 10 years or so, if I'm still around....

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