Assesses John Ashbery's career as a poet in the context of changes in 20th-century aesthetics, the rise of the information age, and the proliferation of aural and visual stimuli. This book addresses Ashbery's many roles - as theorist, postmodern metaphysical, and enemy of poetic decorum; and his use of stream-of-consciousness as a poetic strategy.

Andrew DuBois assesses John Ashbery's career as a poet in the context of changes in 20th-century aesthetics, the rise of the information age, and the proliferation of aural and visual stimuli. The issue of attention, he argues, is useful not only for understanding the problems of perception and concentration in an age of information overload but also for understanding how Ashbery's poetry and poetry in general contend with those issues.