John Ashbery, now 82, has said that his goal is “to produce a poem that the critic can’t even talk about.” Planisphere proves that he keeps trying, even as the critics keep talking. Helen Vendler finds meaning in Planisphere‘s title. She notes that it comes from Marvell’s poem “The Definition of Love,”…

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One way we laymen understand economics and how it affects our times is to think of it in schools. The clash between these schools– between Keynesians and Freidmanites, Harvard and Chicago, fresh and saltwater, free markets and countervailing powers, Roosevelt and Reagan–often become heated and personal giving economics the same…

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