Girls on the Run: A Poem [Hardcover]

John Ashbery (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1999

A book-length poem that is at once tragic and hilarious.

Girls on the Run is a poem loosely based on the works of the "outsider" artist Henry Darger (1892-1972), a recluse who toiled for decades at an enormous illustrated novel about the adventures of a plucky band of little girls. The Vivians are threatened by human tormentors, supernatural demons, and cataclysmic storms; their calmer moments are passed in Edenic landscapes. Darger traced the figures from comic strips, coloring books, and other ephemeral sources, filling in the backgrounds with luscious watercolor. John Ashbery's Girls on the Run creates a similar childlike world of dreamy landscapes, lurking terror, and veiled eroticism. Its fractured narrative mode almost (but never quite) coalesces into a surrealist adventure story for juvenile adults.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This beautiful long poem presents Ashbery at his most contradictory: it is both his most Homeric and "narrative" long poem, yet at the same time his most joissant, collage-based work in years. It borrows from the imagery of Henry Darger (1892-1972), an American "outsider" artist who devoted decades to a mammoth, illustrated novel about the plight of the fictional "Vivian" girls. Ashbery's adaptation follows the adventures of dozens of characters with names like Pliable, Bunny, Mr. McPlaster, Uncle Margaret, and FredArecalling "Farm Implements and Rutabegas in Landscape," Ashbery's talismanic Popeye riff from the '70s. The sentences are often short, somewhat "off" ("Trevor his dog came, half jumping."), and they set up deeply bizarre narrative situations: "Hold it, I have an idea, Fred groaned. Now some of you, five at least, must go over in that little shack./ I'll follow with the tidal waves, and see what happens next." Classic Surrealism erupts frequently in well-timed bursts: "The tame suburban landscape excited him./ He had met his match./ Dimples replaced the mollusk with shoe-therapy." Elsewhere, Ashbery jibes obliquely at the epic tradition, laconically laying down the blandest of similes with pseudo-stentorian bluster, while at other moments the meditative, universal Ashberian persona breaks through, with apt sophistication and terrible humanist relevance: "The oblique flute sounded its note of resin./ In time, he said, we all go under the fluted covers/ of this great world, with its spiral dissonances,/ and then we can see, on the other side,/ what the rascals are up to." More memory than dreamAthe never-was memory of constant companionship, of "fun," of names that resonate with mystery (even "Fred")Athe poem recalls a land that was never boring and whose physical environment, while somewhat foreboding, was as safe as the womb and as colorful as Oz.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Inspired by the work of Henry Dargeran obscure illustrator who spent decades writing a juvenile adventure novel in which young heroines, the Vivians, face a multitude of pulp dangersAshberys 20th work of poetry is a playful romp. A large cast of childrens book charactersTidbit, Rags the Dog, Mr. McPlastertalk around, meditate through, and abruptly disappear from what is essentially a sustained sequence of colorful non sequiturs artfully connected by Ashberys affable syntax, as in this busy passage: Under frozen mounds of yak butter the graffiti have their day, and are elaborate/ some say. Nobody wants to go there. Yes, she said, we will swim/ there if necessary. The arroz con pollo can take us/ and do with us what we will. And so on in the fractured spirit of Lewis Carroll, recalling just how surreal our childhood worldsthe ones we invented with the help of fictionreally were. But while Ashbery can make us forget how serious we are while planting unexpected land mines of metaphysical pizzazz within the daffiness, his hectic wordplay eventually invites tedium.Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux; 1st edition (April 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374162700
• ISBN-13: 978-0374162702
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,746,996 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In my opinion, Ashbery's best, April 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Girls on the Run: A Poem (Hardcover)

I must say that I haven't always been a believer in Ashbery's aesthetic -- or rather his lack of much else beyond his aesthetic -- but this book is absolutely brilliant, especially for anyone who has a passing familiarity with Henry Darger's singularly bizarre and oddly moving work. What a brilliant move to incorporate Darger into a book-length poem. This book marks the first time I felt I moved fully into Ashbery's work, and those that may have felt intimidated or put-off by him before should read this book first if they're interested in taking another look at him. Now I'm a believer.

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good beach reading!, June 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Girls on the Run: A Poem (Hardcover)

This is the very favorite book that I read. It has an author by John Ashbery. It is real poetry. I wanted to read it 2x before I read it. It is good for the beach reading (date: June 18). Please bring a dictionary to look up the different words. Who are the girls (names)? I took this book to everywhere I was going one day and finished that book in 3 days after going 19 places. Please read this enjoyable imagination.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pastoral, apocalyptic fin-de-siecle masterpiece, August 12, 1999

By 

M. E Mattson (Uva Ursi) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Girls on the Run: A Poem (Hardcover)

I, too, have always admired but never been bowled over by John Ashberry's work. With this work I am convinced he is our greatest American poet. Since I am familiar with Henry Darger's pictures and style, Ashberry's imagery seems natural even as it is surreal. The two share an aesthetic of using common cultural artifacts and twisting them so that even though you're staring right at them, you no longer recognize what you're seeing. It is a dream language, and Ashberry has never been so adept at navigating that territory. The poetry, like Darger's paintings, mix the pastoral and the apocalyptic, the innocent and the decadent with such unsettling virtuostic ease that you're not sure which is which. If I had to pick a poetry to compare it to, I might pick Blake--both for the lyric sweetness and hinted threats of "Innocence and Experience," and the cultural commentary/prophecy of his later, longer work. If, like me, your experience with Ashberry's work has left you shrugging, this os the place to start. I don't read much poetry anymore--this will reaffirm your faith in it.