Girls on the Run. - Review - book review

Art in America, Feb, 2000 by Raphael Rubinstein

The New York School of poets--though it wouldn't be named that until 1961--can be said to have begun operations on the June day in 1948 that Ashbery, completing his junior year at Harvard, wrote "The Painter" and mailed it to [Kenneth] Koch, who had already graduated from Harvard and migrated to New York. "The Painter," a sestina, was the first of many poems in which these poets aligned themselves with modern painters in their crises, their conflicts, and their sense of artistic aspiration and romantic possibility.

Over half a century later, Girls on the Run is testimony to the continuing importance of visual art for Ashbery. It also shows a greatly celebrated American poet, now in his early 70s, exploring daring new territory via an unlikely source. By puzzling contrast, few prominent artists of Ashbery's generation seem as willing to run such risks. Perhaps they, too, should dip into Darger's epic for inspiration.