Parallel Movement of the Hands: five unfinished longer works by John Ashbery ed. By Emily Skillings Matthew Clegg By turns surreal

By turns surreal

Olga Berggoltz

tracing a line between two significant events in recent British history: the New Cross Massacre of 1981 in which thirteen young black people were killed in a house fire – and the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017

earth and air

Parallel Movement of the Hands: five unfinished longer works by John Ashbery ed. By Emily Skillings Matthew Clegg By turns surrealParallel Movement of the Hands collects five long, serial poems (and prose poems) which John Ashbery left unfinished and will become part of his archive at Harvard University's Houghton Library.'In progress and realised' as their editor Emily Skillings puts it, these abundant poems are characteristic of the mature work of this American master, an adept of the glories of American speech, who is alert to its insinuating logics and its wild goose chases