Product Description

The document known as "The Parthian Stations" is an account of the overland route from Antioch to the borders of India in the first century BC. John Ash's own "Parthian Stations" begins with his departure from New York to Istanbul. It is a journey, as he writes, not so much between contrasting cities as 'between different versions of the same city', to a place that is exotic and familiar, spanning West and East, past and present, where cultures and histories intersect. It holds memories and encounters: time dissolves, but it is also vividly real, with buses, restaurants and meetings with friends. Precise, witty and unpredictable, John Ash writes as the watchful outsider, with the insights of a resident. "The Parthian Stations" continues his exploration of what it means to be a part of a culture, to celebrate what is loved and ultimately unknowable.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #755505 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

About the Author
Born in Manchester in 1948, John Ash read English at the University of Birmingham. He taught for a year in Cyprus. His Carcanet books include The Goodbyes (Poetry Book Society Choice, 1982), The Branching Stairs (1984), Disbelief (PBS Choice 1987) and The Burnt Pages (1991). His latest collection Anatolikon and To the City was published by Carcanet in 2002.

Customer Reviews

Yet Another Empire Loses Its Lustre
I'm familiar with John Ash's earlier collections, having especially enjoyed The Burnt Pages and consider myself a fan but The Parthian Stations is a big disappointment and, biased feelings about the author's oeuvre aside, not a very good book.

Ash has on the whole substituted capacious structures and sparkling imagination for brevity and a sardonic sense of humour. While deployed competently, the new 'short and bitter' poems quickly become exhausting - even a bit tedious.

'...I knew perhaps six people,
and disliked half of them.
One was a witch, another
an embittered failure. They
were married in hell...'
- Malediction II (Arrival II).

The author might have gotten some catharsis out of the writing process, but the poem holds little in the way of surprise or interest for the reader. What depth of story might underpin the poem (for instance, why was one a 'witch' and the other an 'embittered failure'?) is difficult to explore, given that Ash leaves no room for clues with his new lean, mean verse forms.

Which seems to be the underlying problem of this collection: it's not that the topics Ash chooses are inherently boring (quite the opposite, his travels through the Middle East and experiences as a British ex-pat in New York would give most writers enough material to keep them occupied for years), but his treatment of them so casual and in some cases, flippant, that they collapse under their own weight - like jokes falling flat.

There are some satisfying poems to be picked out of The Parthian Stations: in 'Apologia for an Earlier Book', Ash confesses that:

'In two months I wrote over sixty poems,
but that was because I had nothing better to do,
and, anyway a lot of them were no good,
or so short they were mere gasps or sobs.'

Ignoring the unfortunate sense of irony, at least here there's some restraint and poise in the use of the line breaks instead of the arbitrary enjambment which blights some of the other pieces. The tone is just right, both humble and wry, and the poem opens out into the collection proper with a kind of self-effacement that is admirable. The real enjoyment however, is reserved for the longer, more expansive poems of the book's second (and woefully brief) part, where Ash's lyrical skills are given more room to stretch their legs and breathe.

If you're at all interested in Ash (and there's a lot of reasons why you should be: his restless nomadic wandering; his fascination with fallen empires etc) and his poetry, you'd be best served by Selected Poems (Poetry pleiade), one of my favourite books. If, on the other hand, you're more interested in The Parthian Stations...check it out of the library first.