SOURCE: "Reading John Ashbery's Poems," in The Denver Quarterly, Vol. X, No. 4, Winter, 1976, pp. 6-34.

In the following essay, Kalstone traces the thematic and stylistic development of Ashbery's verse.

In 1972 John Ashbery was invited to read at Shiraz, in Iran, where for several years the Empress had sponsored a festival gathering music, art, and drama remarkable, even notorious, for its modernity: Peter Brook's Orghast, Robert Wilson's week-long production Ka Mountain and GUARDenia Terrace, Merce Cunningham's dances, the music of Stockhausen and John Cage. Ashbery and another visitor, David Kermani, reported that "to a country without significant modern traditions, still under the spell of its own great past, where a production of Shaw or Ibsen would count as a novelty, such an effort even might seem quixotic". Taking into consideration Iranian critics who demanded Shakespeare first or Chekhov first, Ashbery's own response was delighted and characteristic: "The important thing...