Description: John Ashbery appraises the lesser-known poets who shaped his own confounding, infinitely inventive work. In lectures on John Clare, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Raymond Roussel, John Wheelwright, Laura Riding, and David Schubert, Ashbery shows how these writers shaped both his own poetics and the broader trajectory of twentieth-century literature.
Brief description: John Ashbery (1927-2017) was the author of more than twenty books of poetry, including Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, which won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He received dozens of other awards and honors, including the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the National Humanities Medal, and every major American poetry prize.
Review Quotes: Other Traditions is an entertaining and shrewd little book. To begin with, the life stories of the six poets he discusses are all amazing. Ashbery is an accomplished raconteur and the lectures are full of delightful anecdotes...The lectures also provide abundant hints about Ashbery's own method. As he readily admits, poets when writing about other poets frequently write about themselves.--Charles Simic "New York Review of Books"