SOURCE: "In the Act: John Ashbery's And the Stars Were Shining," in Iowa Review, Vol. 25, No. 1, Winter, 1995, pp. 177-83.

In the following review, Clover offers favorable assessment of And the Stars Were Shining.

The risk of falling into oneself, of disappearing inside the welter of strategies and signifiers aggregately known as individual style, is endemic among those gifted enough to have such a style in the first place; the more cultural weight that style achieves, the greater the risk. In the case of the greatest poet of our time the risk becomes enormous making the consistency of Mr. Ashbery's poetic achievement since Some Trees all the more astounding. Almost every book has done something different, has challenged even readers already versed in Ashberiana; each has been dazzlingly full of good stuff. Even Hotel Lautreamont, which seemed dangerously close to the self-parody and reflexive pastiche of someone who has...