Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
The collection that won Ashbery the Pulitzer, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award simultaneously; the only book of poetry to do so. The title poem, a 552-line meditation on Parmigianino's strange self-portrait, is the most sustained and rewarding poem about art-making in the 20th century. Ashbery's famous difficulty is not obscurantism but accuracy: consciousness really does flow like this.
Lucidity in the title poem is a promise the rest of the collection declines to keep. Ashbery's sentences glide, swerve, and dissolve before committing to a subject; ask what a poem is about and the answer is the asking. That may be consciousness rendered with perfect fidelity, or fog with excellent manners, and the book refuses to help you decide.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
