This work is a poem loosely based on the works of the "outsider" artist Henry Darger (1892-1972), a recluse who toiled for decades at an enormous illustrated novel about the adventures of a plucky band of little girls. The Vivians are threatened by human tormentors, supernatural demons and cataclysmic storms; their calmer moments are passed in Edenic landscapes. Darger traced the figures from comic strips, colouring books and other ephemeral sources, filling in the backgrounds with luscious watercolour. John Ashbery's "Girls on the Run" creates a similar childlike world of dreamy landscapes, lurking terror and veiled eroticism. Its fractured narrative mode almost (but never quite) coalesces into a surrealist adventure story.
- ISBN10 0374526974
- ISBN13 9780374526979
- Publish Date 1 April 2000 (first published 26 June 1999)
- Publish Status Unknown
- Imprint Farrar Straus Giroux
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 55
- Language English