Shadow Train will change no one's mind about Ashbery's merits as a poet. His admirers will praise the new-found discipline and concentration in this collection of sixteen line, "sonnet-like" poems. His detractors will grumble about the emperor's new briefs. And the rest will continue to play Pontius Pilate washing their hands of the whole matter. Yet Shadow Train is an interesting book that can give a careful reader a new understanding of Ashbery's strengths and weaknesses as a poet.

Part of the pleasure of reading Ashbery comes from the variety of words, images, moods, and styles he can fit so seamlessly into his work. He continually surprises one with things not usually found in a poem. Shadow Train encompasses everything from Warren G. Harding to the Keystone Kops, from the idea of God to the "Image of the Little Match Girl." He can move convincingly from pathos to...