If one word had to be used to describe John Ashbery's poetry, it would have to be that it is difficult--difficult to read, difficult to understand, and sometimes difficult to like. His admirers and detractors alike concede the point. But Ashbery's poetry is difficult in a different way from the difficulty of most twentieth-century literature. It is not hard because it has an involved mythological or archetypal superstructure, nor because of especially complex imagery or symbolism, nor because it contains arcane allusions to esoteric literatures or cultures. On the contrary, Ashbery's writing is hard precisely because it lacks all these things. Because it lacks almost all the clanking imagistic hardware and mythopoetic scaffolding that most modern works positively vibrate with, it is all the harder for a reader to get a handle on. The mystery in Ashbery's poetry is irreducible to any stylistic trick, and it will be...