(New to) Great Regulars: [John Ashbery] says a turning point came

with his collection, "Rivers and Mountains," published in 1966. For years, he had been pulling apart the art of verse, now he would stitch it back. The evolution continued with "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror." He usually works quickly and rarely revises, accumulating words in his mind so they stream onto the page. But for "Self-Portrait," he found himself struggling, having to set work aside and then come back to it.

"I had very low expectations," he says. "The poems cost me much more effort than anything I had written before."

from Hillel Italie: Associated Press: Foster's Daily Democrat: John Ashbery--movie fan and canonical poet

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