John Ash
John Ash was a poet, translator, and writer. His books of poetry include In the Wake of the Day (2010), The Parthian Stations (2007), To the City (2004), Disbelief (1987), The Branching Stairs (1985), and The Goodbyes (1982). Born in Manchester, he spent many years living in Istanbul and wrote two books about Turkey: A Byzantine Journey (1995) and Turkey, The Other Guide: Western and Southern Anatolia (2001). Ash was the recipient of a Whiting Award in Poetry, and his poems have appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Oasis, The Paris Review, PN Review, the Village Voice, and The Washington Post, among other publications. His poetry has also been anthologized numerous times in the Best American Poetry series. Ash passed away in 2019.
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The Branching StairsPoemsFrom"Funeral Waltz"
You know it too! … The charm of funerals in the rain,
the special effects men with their hoses well aimed,
huge drops exploding on
classically beautiful
black umbrellas.
You know them, -
the houses like fat vegetables
stuffed with old lace, ceramics, silverware, dust –
secure as bank vaults.
Who will inherit?
Vittorio is dining with
that Chinese actress again…
Will the kingdom be divided?
Who will keep
the chandeliers in good repair
and tend the lists of public enemies?
The Branching Stairs:Poems -
The Branching StairsPoemsFrom"Snow: A Romance"
He finds the girl in the snow. Only he has seen her. She is so white, only a shred of bright hair might provide a focus for rifle-sights. In a split second, moving more quickly than a lizard, he has snatched her away. She is icy cold. If she is not to die he must carry her quickly down to the lake.
The Branching Stairs:Poems -
The Branching StairsPoemsFrom"The Weather or The English Requiem"
Yes, the sewers collapse,
we have potholes as in New York
and we love them incontinently.
The street is quiet. No one disturbs
the trees when they let fall
their leaves. This is a dream, I’m afraid
and the pavements (unpaved)
are swimming with darkness.
Hairline cracks appear
even in the beautiful autumn sky
supplied by the American conglomerate.
The Branching Stairs:Poems
"John Ash could be the best English poet of his generation. Yet somehow it seems inappropriate to play the old rating game with him. Ash lives as an expatriate in Istanbul, a vantage point from which the machinations of 'po-biz' must seem very far away. And that distance isn't merely a geographical fact but a condition of his work." —Peter Campion, Poetry [on To the City]
"Full of elegance and poise, properly elegiac and alluding to real, as well as imagined losses and absences, the poems are by turns beautiful, entertaining, and moving." —The Guardian [on In the Wake of the Day]
"This may be the most auspicious debut of its kind since Auden’s." —The New York Times Book Review [on The Branching Stairs]
Selected Works
