Shadow Train

A captivating experiment in traditional poetic form, from one of the most untraditional American poets ever to set pen to paper

At first glance, John Ashbery's Shadow Train seems to embrace the constraints of traditional poetic form—but closer reading reveals that this work is Ashbery at his revolutionary best. In fifty poems, each consisting solely of four connected quatrains, Ashbery apparently plays by the rules while simultaneously violating every single one. Over and over again, the fa...