Houseboat Days

This reissue of a book of thirty-nine poems, first collected in 1977, reminds us of Ashbery’s astonishing explorations (to use Donald Barthelme’s words) of places where no one has ever been. “Wet Casements,” “Syringa,” “Loving Mad Tom,” and the long “Fantasia on ‘The Nut-Brown Maid,'” which concludes the book, are among the riches in a collection of dazzling eloquence and power.