Girls on the Run: A Poem

First edition. 8vo. Pp. viii, 55. Quarter bound black cloth over beige paper-boards, with black ink design to front and lettered in gilt to spine. Jacket art by Henry Darger.

Signed and dated by the Author to title page.

Excerpts originally published in The Germ, Grand Street, Lingo, Modern Painters, On Paper and Shiny.

A book-length poem inspired by the work of "outsider" artist Henry Darger (1892–1973), a recluse who toiled for decades at an enormous illustrated novel about the adventures of a plucky band of young girls. Ashbery's narrative tribute creates a kindred childlike world of dreamy landscapes, lurking terror, and veiled eroticism.

Recipient of the holy trifecta: the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics' Circle Award for his masterpiece, Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975). "[A] tank of literary laughing gas that exhilarates and confounds in roughly equal measure." –David Kirby, The New York Times