> He [John Ashbery] can write can't he.
His art criticism, though it might be of marginal importance, is a pleasure to read. It carries the same ease of insight as his recently published Charles Eliot Norton lectures, with none of what can make criticism tedious or suspect--he's not out to assassinate any orchards.
His poetry is apolitical, or at least not explicitly political in the way Milton can be. An argument could be made that his poetry is politically interesting for what it evades, seeing in it a kind of imploded romanticism, the hazards of being apolitical, evading the Real almost successfully. And clearly, Ashbery's epistemological coordinates can be viewed as a product of late capitalism.
Alec
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