John Ashbery in Conversation With Mark Ford (Between the Lines)

Rating:
Summary: Not Quite There
Review: Being one of the first to rush and buy this book, I didn't have the luxury of reading other Amazon reviewers in order to know what to expect. What I got was some loose but interesting chit-chat about Ashbery's personal and professional life.
This interview (I hesitate calling it that) was very informal. Mark Ford lets Ashbery kind of run the show, so to speak.
There are two sides of this conversation that I have already mentioned: one is the personal side, the other is Ashbery's professional side as it relates to his books of poetry and the origin. The personal questions about childhood, his brother's death, education, seemed to carry on too far thus leaving less room for talk about poetry. I wanted Ashbery to go more in depth about all the books of poetry, especially his latest since that is obviously clearer in the memory bank; but Ford in his non-investigative questions left no room in the end for an extensive bio of Ashbery's poetry. The end was too truncated.

Overall the book had snippets that let me in to an evasive Ashbery, but I want more about the poetry and less about Ashbery.