Selected Poems

Writing of his fourth collection in the same review, Richard Tillinghast said: 'John Ash is a greatly gifted poet who moves easily from the hieratic to the demotic.' And John Ashbery has spoken of his poetry as 'resonant with gorgeous imagery that distracts one from the super-lucid, rational argument that quietly continues to assert itself. It seems both familiar and strange, noble and funny, romantic and level-headed.' Among contemporary British poets he is distinguished for his wit, his formal and thematic ambition, and his Byzantine range.