{"product_id":"9781480459151","title":"Houseboat Days","description":"\u003cb\u003eIs poetry the act of putting something together, or the art of taking something apart? \u003ci\u003eHouseboat Days\u003c\/i\u003e, one of John Ashbery’s most celebrated collections, offers its own answer\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRemarkable for its introspection and for the response it elicited when it was first published in 1977, \u003ci\u003eHouseboat Days\u003c\/i\u003e is Ashbery’s much-discussed follow-up to his 1975 masterpiece \u003ci\u003eSelf-Portrait in a Convex Mirror\u003c\/i\u003e, and remains one of his most studied books to date.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eHouseboat Days\u003c\/i\u003e begins with the moving, unforgettable poem “Street Musicians,” an allegory of artistic and personal loss that came ten years after the death of Ashbery’s friend and fellow New York poet Frank O’Hara. But while many of the poems in \u003ci\u003eHouseboat Days\u003c\/i\u003e are strikingly personal, especially when compared to Ashbery’s work from the 1950s and 1960s, the collection is less about the poet than about the act of writing poetry. In such widely anthologized poems as “Wet Casements,” “Syringa,” “And \u003ci\u003eUt Pictura Poesis\u003c\/i\u003e Is Her Name,” and “What Is Poetry,” Ashbery embraces the challenge of his own ars poetica, exploring and exploding the trusses, foundations, and underground caverns that underlie the creative act, and specifically, the act of creating a poem. Marjorie Perloff of the \u003ci\u003eWashington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e called \u003ci\u003eHouseboat Days\u003c\/i\u003e “the most exciting, most original book of poems to have appeared in the 1970s.” \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Open Road Media","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47157392179440,"sku":"9781480459151","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781480459151_p0.jpg?v=1763619708","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781480459151","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}