Too much science on this blog, it’s getting stuffy around here. How about a poem from John Ashbery?
You can’t say it that way any more.
Bothered about beauty you have to
Come out into the open, into a clearing,
And rest. Certainly whatever funny happens to you
Is OK. To demand more than this would be strange
Of you, you who have so many lovers,
People who look up to you and are willing
To do things for you, but you think
It’s not right, that if they really knew you …
So much for self-analysis. Now,
About what to put in your poem-painting:
Flowers are always nice, particularly delphinium.
Names of boys you once knew and their sleds,
Skyrockets are good — do they still exist?
There are a lot of other things of the same quality
As those I’ve mentioned. Now one must
Find a few important words, and a lot of low-keyed,
Dull-sounding ones. She approached me
About buying her desk. Suddenly the street was
Bananas and the clangor of Japanese instruments.
Humdrum testaments were scattered around. His head
Locked into mine. We were a seesaw. Something
Ought to be written about how this affects
You when you write poetry:
The extreme austerity of an almost empty mind
Colliding with the lush, Rousseau-like foliage of its desire to communicate
Something between breaths, if only for the sake
Of others and their desire to understand you and desert you
For other centers of communication, so that understanding
May begin, and in doing so be undone.
If you would like to understand him (and then perhaps desert him for other centers of communication), Slate explains How to Read John Ashbery. Or you could just listen to him directly:
What a nice poem. I love “Now one must
Find a few important words, and a lot of low-keyed,
Dull-sounding ones. ”
I enjoy your blog.
welll…I have a rule against reading anything that requires outside explanation, but that has nice flow to it
Kinda like being mildly high and going with the flow, casting off logic to stay afloat. Easy to understand his popularity in the mtv esthetic, an old guy who would understand the egalitarian lure of moshing, like Carlin or even Whitman. Reminiscent of course of Dali (“Suddenly the street was/Bananas…”), plays of Ionesco, also an abstract modernist, though less in-your-face surreal.
Thanks, good reading, though I doubt anyone here has complained of stuffiness.
I love when you post poetry, Sean. you’ve got great literary taste!
Possibly stating the obvious, but it seems to me the poet is gently taking to task a woman who, while successful in her way, is somewhat empty headed and superficial yet yearns to be taken seriously for ideas she doesn’t have.
It could be read as a subtle lament for the many people who struggle to develop or express talents they don’t have as much as they think, to fit some imagined mould or seek approval, while disdaining gifts they do have.
Not directly relevant, but one of my favourite poems by Robert Frost is A Passing Glimpse
There’s a collection of his first twelve books in the making, due October, comprising Ashbery’s published poetic work from 1956-87 plus a number of unpublished poems. What’s more, it’s described as a “first volume” and “inaugurating” a collected edition of Ashbery’s work.
^_^J.
This poem is about an artist trying to work. It is hard to find inspiration, empty your mind – be distracted and then *you* finding inspiration from chaos.