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Title: Shoptaw - On the Outside
Review: I am alas an ordinary reader and I was curious to see what this Ashbery fuss was all about. I found Ashbery's poetry to be quite obscure and thought Shoptaw's book might help me make some sense of it. I was greatly disappointed. The book was clearly a tour de force of rank archanery. Shoptaw seems quite impressed with his ability to dazzle us with obscure jargon but it left me baffled. In the end I was no closer to understanding or appreciating Ashbery. To write that the "cryptographic process is indecipherable" is itself on the very face of it patently indecipherable. This book may impress fellow members of his academic cult but it did not speak to me and,I venture to guess, other ordinary readers.
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