Girls on the Run: A Poem

By John Ashbery

Book Overview

A book-length poem that is at once tragic and hilarious.Girls on the Run is a poem loosely based on the works of the "outsider" artist Henry Darger (1892-1972), a recluse who toiled for decades at an... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374162700
• ISBN13: 9780374162702
• Release Date: April 1999
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Length: 55 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.5" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

3.75 stars : I, too, find him prepossessing

Predictable surprises -- and a few unpredictable ones -- inhabit this volume, a single long poem loosely based on the illustrations of Henry Darger. There are chuckleworthy phrases that rattle about the brain with a happy insouciance for several days after one has read the thing. "The oxymoron gets his rocks off" and "pink shrouds fell on the pansy jamboree." And we like going for the ride, even if we get a little dizzy and a little seasick. The "androgynous truths" bubble perkily to the surface, in a verbal universe where what matters matters as much as what doesn't matter. We know a few of the magician's tricks, but there are always a few swerves and slides which we can't anticipate. The honey drips from a blighted bough -- or is it a bright and sprightly bough? -- and the housepets lap the gruel in their gaily-coloured bowls, and the narrator stands back and lets it all happen. As with anything by Ashbery, there are unwholesome things and things from which the reader runs away, but we marvel at the ingenuity nonetheless.

Pastoral, apocalyptic fin-de-siecle masterpiece

I, too, have always admired but never been bowled over by John Ashberry's work. With this work I am convinced he is our greatest American poet. Since I am familiar with Henry Darger's pictures and style, Ashberry's imagery seems natural even as it is surreal. The two share an aesthetic of using common cultural artifacts and twisting them so that even though you're staring right at them, you no longer recognize what you're seeing. It is a dream language, and Ashberry has never been so adept at navigating that territory. The poetry, like Darger's paintings, mix the pastoral and the apocalyptic, the innocent and the decadent with such unsettling virtuostic ease that you're not sure which is which. If I had to pick a poetry to compare it to, I might pick Blake--both for the lyric sweetness and hinted threats of "Innocence and Experience," and the cultural commentary/prophecy of his later, longer work. If, like me, your experience with Ashberry's work has left you shrugging, this os the place to start. I don't read much poetry anymore--this will reaffirm your faith in it.

Most great

Words very good, yes. Ashbery writes best good book. Yes, buy it, good, yes.

Good beach reading!

This is the very favorite book that I read. It has an author by John Ashbery. It is real poetry. I wanted to read it 2x before I read it. It is good for the beach reading (date: June 18). Please bring a dictionary to look up the different words. Who are the girls (names)? I took this book to everywhere I was going one day and finished that book in 3 days after going 19 places. Please read this enjoyable imagination.

In my opinion, Ashbery's best

I must say that I haven't always been a believer in Ashbery's aesthetic -- or rather his lack of much else beyond his aesthetic -- but this book is absolutely brilliant, especially for anyone who has a passing familiarity with Henry Darger's singularly bizarre and oddly moving work. What a brilliant move to incorporate Darger into a book-length poem. This book marks the first time I felt I moved fully into Ashbery's work, and those that may have felt intimidated or put-off by him before should read this book first if they're interested in taking another look at him. Now I'm a believer.