It's Clear at the end of the twentieth century that John Ashbery is one of the most important American poets writing today. The Mooting of Starting Out demonstrates his early bravado and extraordinary development as a poet over the first twenty years of his poetic career, beginning with his stunning debut collection, Some Trees, which W. H. Auden chose in 1956 to be published in the Yale Younger Poets Series. This extraordinary volume juxtaposes what has been called Ashbery's most accessible book, The Double Dream of Spring (0970), with the highly idiosyncratic and much admired prose poetry of Three Poems (1972). Along with The Tennis Court Oath and Rivers and Mountains, which was nominated for a National Book Award in 1967, these are the books that brought Ashbery's brilliant star into focus.

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