Many of John Ashbery’s recent poems are full of sayings and parables and clichés — but from what culture, what country? The world of these poems resembles ours: there are ball games and movies and suburbs and Jesus. But while Ashbery’s language often feels well-worn (“Do not fear the gulches / asleep on the farm”; “Be ready to hug your glass star”), it’s hard to say who exactly wore it, and why. This mixture of familiarity and foreignness is at once funny and profound — many of the formulations are ridiculous, and yet it’s as though Ashbery has invented an Esperanto…