The collection that won Ashbery the Pulitzer, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award simultaneously; the only book of poetry to do so. The title poem, a 552-line meditation on Parmigianino's strange self-portrait, is the most sustained and rewarding poem about art-making in the 20th century. Ashbery's famous difficulty is not obscurantism but accuracy: consciousness really does flow like this.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.