The man with the red hat And the polar bear, is he here too? The window giving on shade, Is that here too? And all the little helps, My initials in the sky, The hay of an arctic summer night?
The bear Drops dead in sight of the window. Lovely tribes have just moved to the north. In the flickering evening the martins grow denser. Rivers of wings surround us and vast tribulation.
John Ashbery Born: 28 July 1927, New York, USA Nationality: American Died: 3 September 2017, New York, USA
Ashbery was an art critic and poet. He is the most influential American poet of his time. He published over twenty volumes of poetry, winning almost every major American award for poetry including the Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for his collection “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.” Ashbery is renowned for his postmodern complexity and opacity and his work still proves to be controversial.
The first of the undecoded messages read: “Popeye sits in thunder, Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment, From livid curtain’s hue, a tangram emerges: a country.” Meanwhile the Sea Hag was relaxing on a green couch: “How pleasant To spend one’s vacation en la casa de Popeye,” she scratched Her cleft chin’s solitary hair. She remembered spinach
And was going to ask Wimpy if he had bought any spinach. “M’love,” he intercepted, “the plains are decked out in thunder Today, and it shall be as you wish.” He scratched The part of his head under his hat. The apartment Seemed to grow smaller. “But what if no pleasant Inspiration plunge us now to the stars? For this is my country.”
Suddenly they remembered how it was cheaper in the country. Wimpy was thoughtfully cutting open a number 2 can of spinach When the door opened and Swee’pea crept in. “How pleasant!” But Swee’pea looked morose. A note was pinned to his bib. “Thunder And tears are unavailing,” it read. “Henceforth shall Popeye’s apartment Be but remembered space, toxic or salubrious, whole or scratched.”
Olive came hurtling through the window; its geraniums scratched Her long thigh. “I have news!” she gasped. “Popeye, forced as you know to flee the country One musty gusty evening, by the schemes of his wizened, duplicate father, jealous of the apartment And all that it contains, myself and spinach In particular, heaves bolts of loving thunder At his own astonished becoming, rupturing the pleasant
Arpeggio of our years. No more shall pleasant Rays of the sun refresh your sense of growing old, nor the scratched Tree-trunks and mossy foliage, only immaculate darkness and thunder.” She grabbed Swee’pea. “I’m taking the brat to the country.” “But you can’t do that–he hasn’t even finished his spinach,” Urged the Sea Hag, looking fearfully around at the apartment.
But Olive was already out of earshot. Now the apartment Succumbed to a strange new hush. “Actually it’s quite pleasant Here,” thought the Sea Hag. “If this is all we need fear from spinach Then I don’t mind so much. Perhaps we could invite Alice the Goon over”–she scratched One dug pensively–“but Wimpy is such a country Bumpkin, always burping like that.” Minute at first, the thunder
Soon filled the apartment. It was domestic thunder, The color of spinach. Popeye chuckled and scratched His balls: it sure was pleasant to spend a day in the country
John Ashbery 1927-2017
John Ashbery Born: 28 July 1927, New York, USA Nationality: American Died: 3 September 2017, New York, USA
Ashbery was an art critic and poet. He was the most influential American poet of his time. He published over twenty volumes of poetry, winning almost every major American award for poetry including the Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for his collection “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.” Ashbery was renowned for his postmodern complexity and opacity and his work still proves to be controversial
Something strange is creeping across me. La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars Of “I Thought about You” or something mellow from Amadigi di Gaula for everything–a mint-condition can Of Rumford’s Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller’s fertile Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged Stock–to come clattering through the rainbow trellis Where Pistachio Avenue rams the 2300 block of Highland Fling Terrace. He promised he’d get me out of this one, That mean old cartoonist, but just look what he’s Done to me now! I scarce dare approach me mug’s attenuated Reflection in yon hubcap, so jaundiced, so déconfit Are its lineaments–fun, no doubt, for some quack phrenologist’s Fern-clogged waiting room, but hardly what you’d call Companionable. But everything is getting choked to the point of Silence. Just now a magnetic storm hung in the swatch of sky Over the Fudds’ garage, reducing it–drastically– To the aura of a plumbago-blue log cabin on A Gadsden Purchase commemorative cover. Suddenly all is Loathing. I don’t want to go back inside any more. You meet Enough vague people on this emerald traffic-island–no, Not people, comings and goings, more: mutterings, splatterings, The bizarrely but effectively equipped infantries of happy-go-nutty Vegetal jacqueries, plumed, pointed at the little White cardboard castle over the mill run. “Up The lazy river, how happy we could be?” How will it end? That geranium glow Over Anaheim’s had the riot act read to it by the Etna-size firecracker that exploded last minute into A carte du Tendre in whose lower right-hand corner (Hard by the jock-itch sand-trap that skirts The asparagus patch of algolagnic nuits blanches) Amadis Is cozening the Princesse de Cleves into a midnight micturition spree On the Tamigi with the Wallets (Walt, Blossom, and little Sleezix) on a lamé barge “borrowed” from Ollie Of the Movies’ dread mistress of the robes. Wait! I have an announcement! This wide, tepidly meandering, Civilized Lethe (one can barely make out the maypoles And châlets de nécessitê on its sedgy shore) leads to Tophet, that Landfill-haunted, not-so-residential resort from which Some travellers return! This whole moment is the groin Of a borborygmic giant who even now Is rolling over on us in his sleep. Farewell bocages, Tanneries, water-meadows. The allegory comes unsnarled Too soon; a shower of pecky acajou harpoons is About all there is to be noted between tornadoes. I have Only my intermittent life in your thoughts to live Which is like thinking in another language. Everything Depends on whether somebody reminds you of me. That this is a fabulation, and that those “other times” Are in fact the silences of the soul, picked out in Diamonds on stygian velvet, matters less than it should. Prodigies of timing may be arranged to convince them We live in one dimension, they in ours. While I Abroad through all the coasts of dark destruction seek Deliverance for us all, think in that language: its Grammar, though tortured, offers pavillions At each new parting of the ways. Pastel Ambulances scoop up the quick and hie them to hospitals. “It’s all bits and pieces, spangles, patches, really; nothing Stands alone. What happened to creative evolution?” Sighed Aglavaine. Then to her Sélysette: “If his Achievement is only to end up less boring than the others, What’s keeping us here? Why not leave at once? I have to stay here while they sit in there, Laugh, drink, have fine time. In my day One lay under the tough green leaves, Pretending not to notice how they bled into The sky’s aqua, the wafted-away no-color of regions supposed Not to concern us. And so we too Came where the others came: nights of physical endurance, Or if, by day, our behavior was anarchically Correct, at least by New Brutalism standards, all then Grew taciturn by previous agreement. We were spirited Away en bateau, under cover of fudge dark. It’s not the incomplete importunes, but the spookiness Of the finished product. True, to ask less were folly, yet If he is the result of himself, how much the better For him we ought to be! And how little, finally, We take this into account! Is the puckered garance satin Of a case that once held a brace of dueling pistols our Only acknowledging of that color? I like not this, Methinks, yet this disappointing sequel to ourselves Has been applauded in London and St. Petersburg. Somewhere Ravens pray for us.” The storm finished brewing. And thus She questioned all who came in at the great gate, but none She found who ever heard of Amadis, Nor of stern Aureng-Zebe, his first love. Some They were to whom this mattered not a jot: since all By definition is completeness (so In utter darkness they reasoned), why not Accept it as it pleases to reveal itself? As when Low skyscrapers from lower-hanging clouds reveal A turret there, an art-deco escarpment here, and last perhaps The pattern that may carry the sense, but Stays hidden in the mysteries of pagination. Not what we see but how we see it matters; all’s Alike, the same, and we greet him who announces The change as we would greet the change itself. All life is but a figment; conversely, the tiny Tome that slips from your hand is not perhaps the Missing link in this invisible picnic whose leverage Shrouds our sense of it. Therefore bivouac we On this great, blond highway, unimpeded by Veiled scruples, worn conundrums. Morning is Impermanent. Grab sex things, swing up Over the horizon like a boy On a fishing expedition. No one really knows Or cares whether this is the whole of which parts Were vouchsafed–once–but to be ambling on’s The tradition more than the safekeeping of it. This mulch for Play keeps them interested and busy while the big, Vaguer stuff can decide what it wants–what maps, what Model cities, how much waste space. Life, our Life anyway, is between. We don’t mind Or notice any more that the sky is green, a parrot One, but have our earnest where it chances on us, Disingenuous, intrigued, inviting more, Always invoking the echo, a summer’s day
John Ashbery 1927-2017
John Ashbery Born: 28 July 1927, New York, USA Nationality: American Died: 3 September 2017, New York, USA
Ashbery was an art critic and poet. He is the most influential American poet of his time. He published over twenty volumes of poetry, winning almost every major American award for poetry including the Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for his collection “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.” Ashbery is renowned for his postmodern complexity and opacity and his work still proves to be controversial.
What name do I have for you? Certainly there is not name for you In the sense that the stars have names That somehow fit them. Just walking around,
An object of curiosity to some, But you are too preoccupied By the secret smudge in the back of your soul To say much and wander around,
Smiling to yourself and others. It gets to be kind of lonely But at the same time off-putting. Counterproductive, as you realize once again
That the longest way is the most efficient way, The one that looped among islands, and You always seemed to be traveling in a circle. And now that the end is near
The segments of the trip swing open like an orange. There is light in there and mystery and food. Come see it. Come not for me but it. But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other
John Ashbery 1927-2017
John Ashbery Born: 28 July 1927, New York, USA Nationality: American Died: 3 September 2017, New York, USA
Ashbery was an art critic and poet. He is the most influential American poet of his time. He published over twenty volumes of poetry, winning almost every major American award for poetry including the Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for his collection “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.” Ashbery is renowned for his postmodern complexity and opacity and his work still proves to be controversial
Jezzie G 