Most Popular Books by John Ashbery

The Tosti sisters of Paris, France, have come to the small, upstate New York village of Kelton for a change of pace. But when the pair enters the lives of Alice, an unfulfilled cellist, her brother Marshall, and Fabia and Victor, another sister and brother who are as bumbling as they are overindulged, it is certain that Kelton will never again be the same unassuming place.

An essential, vibrant collection of masterful translations by one of the finest poets at work today Collected French Translations: Prose, the second volume in a landmark two-volume selection of John Ashbery''s translations, focuses on prose writing. Ashbery''s own prose writings and engagement with prose writers—through translations, essays, and criticism—have had a profound impact on the cultural landscape of the past half century. This book presents his versions of, among others, the classic French fairy tale "The White Cat" by Marie-Catherine d''Aulnoy, as well as works by such innovative masters as Raymond Roussel and Giorgio de Chirico. Here are all of Roussel''s Documents to Serve as an Outline and extracts from his Impressions of Africa; selections from Georges Bataille''s darkly erotic first novella, L''abbé C; Antonin Artaud''s correspondence with the writer Jacques Rivière; Salvador Dalí on Willem de Kooning''s art; Jacques Dupin on Giacometti; and key theoretical and conceptual texts by Odilon Redon, Jean Hélion, Iannis Xenakis, and Marcelin Pleynet. Several of these twenty-nine prose pieces, by seventeen fiction writers, playwrights, artists, musicians, and critics, are previously unpublished or have been long unavailable. Many are modern classics, such as Pierre Reverdy''s Haunted House. This book provides fresh insight into the range of French cultural influence on Ashbery''s life and work in literature and the arts.

Robert Mapplethorpe''s reputation rests largely on a body of black and white sexual imagery, yet he was one of the most elegant still-life photographers. His flower studies, to which he sometimes referred to as his ''New York flowers'' are slightly poisonous and very sexual. This will be the most decorative of all the Mapplethorpe books.

Parallel Movement of the Hands collects five long, serial poems (and prose poems) which John Ashbery left unfinished and will become part of his archive at Harvard University''s Houghton Library. ''In-progress and realised'' as their editor Emily Skillings puts it, these abundant poems are characteristic of the mature work of this American master, an adept of the glories of American speech, who is alert to its insinuating logics and its wild goose chases through popular culture and secret histories. In these poems, Carl Czerny rubs shoulders with the Hardy Boys, Robert Mapplethorpe and Eadweard Muybridge, all of them integrated into Ashbery''s generous, omnivorous forms. ''How could I have had such a good idea?'' the poet asks in ''The History of Photography''. So many good ideas, such a wealth of surprising points of departure.