John Ashbery. 
 
New York: The Viking Press, 1975. Octavo. Hardcover with a dust jacket. First edition, first printing. Quarter cloth boards with mild sunning to the top and bottom edges of the boards and a remainder mark to the top edge of the text block that has smeared across the top edge. Unclipped jacket has a small scuff to the front cover and very mild edge wear. Book and jacket are in very good condition.
 
A classic of contemporary poetry, and that declarer of classics status, Harold Bloom, announced of it: "Poetic greatness. The difficulties that this new book presents are the legitimate difficulties of major poetry---depth of complex emotion, individuality of sensibility of vision, and the power of the mind over language and the universe of death." 
 
“You bad birds,
But God shall not punish you, you
Shall be with us in heaven, though less
Conscious of your happiness, perhaps, than we.