The Best American Poetry

Introducing John Ashbery

Four introductions to poetry readings given by John Ashbery.

. . .with John everything seems significant. "Mountain ash mindlessly dropping its berries" is one place where he put consciously  himself in a line by punning on his name. The adverb makes quite a difference. When Ashbery says "ashtray" it means ashtray and maybe something else as well. -- DL

Alone with John Ashbery (by Angela Patrinos)

“We had macaroni for lunch every day,” John Ashbery read, “except Sunday, when a small quail was induced / to be served to us”

This produced laughter from the audience.  Mr. Ashbery looked up from the page at us, and delivered the last two lines:

“Why do I tell you these things?
You are not even here.”

But we were there — at least three hundred of us, possibly more — we’d come to see him, to hear him tell us these things, and more things. Every chair was taken in Wollman Hall and those audience members who’d arrived not late, but not early, either stood or sat on the floor. The poem, titled, “The Room,” begins:

“The room I entered was a dream of this room.

Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.”

                                                                                          At the start of the evening, in his introduction, the poet and scholar David Lehman said that he’d studied Ashbery’s poetry as an undergraduate at Columbia University. And while Mr. Ashbery read from Notes From the Air, the two men sat side by side at the table, as intimately unacquainted as people sharing a table at the public library, each reading from his own copy of the same book, one aloud, one silently, and Mr. Lehman seemed a student again, absorbed in the poetry of one of his favorite poets.

 

 

Mr. Ashbery, in a white shirt, read not slowly, not quickly, and rarely looked up.

After reading from his published poems, Mr. Ashbery pulled loose pages of new poems from a well-handled manila envelope. Now, it wasn’t going to be possible for any of us to follow along, either from a book or from memory.      

To hear a poem being read without having had time with the poem on the printed page is to feel mildly unmoored, and in between poems, when Ashbery looked up, his gaze was as piercing as it was opaque, which lent to the sensation.  But his gaze is a private gaze that allows for privacy; one needn’t be seen drifting in public.   

 

He read a new poem titled, “He Who Loves and Runs Away,” and then searched in silence for another poem to read. As he leafed through his papers, we watched in our own silence, staring at him so intently as though it was our duty to keep him from vanishing between poems.

 

“I wanted to read something, but I can’t find it,” he finally said. 

 

He moved on to his translations of [Pierre] Reverdy, and then he talked some about his poetry, and took questions.

 

Of the poem “The History of My Life,” he said, “The poem sounds like straight autobiography, and actually it is, but I didn’t realize it when I was writing it. I had been writing about my own life without knowing it.”

Once upon a time there were two brothers.
Then there was only one: myself.

I grew up fast, before learning to drive,
even.  There was I: a stinking adult.

I thought of developing interests
someone might take an interest in.  No soap.

I became very weepy for what had seemed
like the pleasant early years.  As I aged

increasingly, I also grew more charitable
with regard to my thoughts and ideas,

thinking them at least as good as the next man’s.
Then a great devouring cloud

came and loitered on the horizon, drinking
it up, for what seemed like months or years.

About the strange non-engagement between dreams and life: “We dream, we get up, we go about our business and a few hours later, we’re back to being invaded by dreams. The president dreams, the pope dreams. But we go about our lives as though these dreams never happen.”

Ashbery had read a pantoum, the title poem of his collection, Hotel Lautreamont (which also appears in Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems.) About this unusual form Ashbery said, “The pantoum is weird and rather frustrating — you have to abandon what you wanted to write and let [the form] write it for you.  This is one of the only poems I have written on a computer, and I found it rather helpful.”  He usually types his poems on a manual typewriter.

About starting poems in the middle: “The middle is where everyone starts writing.  It’s not as though there is a threshold called The Beginning.  The same can be said for the end — there’s no formal ending.” 

Does he attend openings and visit galleries? He does.

John Ashbery confides that he is looking forward to the Poussin exhibit at the Met where he might see Poussin's Landscape with Orpheus and Eurydice.

 

from the archives; originally posted April 16, 2008. Reposted today, April 7, which was designated "John Ashbery day" in perpetuity in a ceremony in the New York City Council in April 2006 during the John Ashbery festival we staged at the New School that week.  Participants included  Strar Black, Billy Collins,Jane Freilicher, Jorie Graham, Daniel Halpern, Jane Hammond, Bob Holman, Ann Lauterbach, Meghan O'Rourke, Ron Padgett, Jenni Quilter, Archie Rand, Eugene Richie,David Shapiro, James Tate, John Emil Vincent, Susan Wheeler, Dara Wier.

Happy JA Day, Every Buddy!

 

 
 

 

 

 
 
It's John Ashbery Day in New York -- as April 7 was designated ("in perpetuity") by New York's City Council, Ms. Christine Quinn presiding, on April 6, 2006 -- so a bunch of us decided to get together and toast our absent hero!

 
 

 

 

 
 
It's John Ashbery Day in New York -- as April 7 was designated ("in perpetuity") by New York's City Council, Ms. Christine Quinn presiding, on April 6, 2006 -- so a bunch of us decided to get together and toast our absent hero!

Next Line, Please: The Prophecy Merlin Shall Make [by Virginia Valenzuela]

It is a real pleasure to see the buzz form around the publication of Next Line, Please: Prompts to Inspire Poets and Writers. So much talent and so many good poems are to be found there, along with prompts as far as the eye can read! Today we look at a poem written by one of the contributors, a sort of ode to the series as a whole.

From Paul Michelsen, who won NLP’s MVP award two years ago, comes this cento, made up of lines from other contributors, in our honor. Its title, “Next Line.”

Midnight champagne,
And we are drinking Gallo Burgundy
The sickle begins to dream,
Drunk on the sacrament—

Roll the words to start a drumbeat in your brain.

We scrabble for an icy antidote,
A busy spray of flaw and folly
That tastes like candy,
Strewn across a barren no-man’s-land,
Marriage on the rocks
Rehearsing its surrender
As things sour beyond hope.

You make promises.
Now it’s too late.
Flamingo-pink tinctures mixed from
catastrophe—
Made to look like something we can stand in.

What coda might make the whole emerge?

For this week’s prompt, we look to hard-to-solve riddles, metaphysical jests, and memorable sentences lifted out of context. Some possible opening lines include:

— A good liar needs a first-rate memory.

— This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time.

— Neither fugues nor feathers enchant the fool.

— “No one will read what I write here; therefore,”

— The desire to make love in a pagoda

See what at you can do with one or more of these lines in a poem 12 lines long (or shorter).

Visit the American Scholar's page to enter your candidate!

 

Doris Day, "before she was a virgin": happy birthday to a great big-band singer

On April 3, let's celebrate Doris Day, a very great singer. 

The People Dylan Left Behind (by Lawrence J. Epstein)

Bobby Zimmerman knew at an early age that he was bound for musical glory. The pain in his soul could be managed whenever he held a guitar. And he knew his connection to the music he heard all about him was a special.

Dylan was unstoppable. He got rare records any way he could and swallowed America’s musical heritage. Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie showed him that the poetry that he had written could be transformed into lyrics. At the beginning, his confidence was indistinguishable from adolescent bravado. But reality soon verified his expectations.

His personality was a vital component of his success. His caution seemed to have been amputated. He wasn’t slowed by the emotional stop signs and red lights that deaccelerate the speed with which most of us charge ahead

The moments of success accumulated. Some must have stood out to him. Maybe it was the writing of Blowin’ in the Wind, which was far more sophisticated than his earlier work. Or maybe it was when he asked Tom Paxton whether the words of A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall formed a poem or a song lyric.

At one point during the staggering rise of his career, Dylan began to see that he was better than anyone else. Other people noticed it too. Some were jealous and angry. Some were impressed.

But this explosion of raw talent into an artist and a person unlike any other left the early Dylan with a dilemma. What should he do with people from his past? He was, after all, Bob Dylan, and they weren’t. Joan Didion once wrote of Joan Baez that she was a personality before she was a person. Dylan had that same reality.

Dylan wrote about this dilemma in several songs. Let’s consider three relatively early ones.

Take “Long Time Gone.” As with many of his early songs, this one was adapted from other songs. The lyrics are a re-working of “Maggie Walker Blues.” The tune was lifted from Kelly Harrell & The Virginia String Band’s “My Name is John Johanna” which Dylan heard on the influential Anthology of American Folk Music compiled by Harry Smith. In a telling sample of how Dylan worked, Dylan’s lyrics are far superior to the material he borrowed from. He was a master thief with a unique access to language.

At one point in the song, he sings:

“You might see me on your crossroads
When I’m a-passin’ through
Remember me how you wish to
As I’m a-driftin’ from your view
I ain’t got the time to think about it
I got too much to get done”

Here Dylan defines his feelings towards the people he meets along the way as he speeds along his career track. He tells them that he doesn’t much care what they think of him. He needs, instead, to use his time to think about what his art calls upon him to do next. His work is more important than worrying about the reactions of others. This might uncharitably be seen as a dismissal of other people, but from another point of view it defines the quiet focus artists require to do their work. It’s selfish if the artist lacks true talent. A talented artist like Dylan makes the issue more complicated. What is, after all, the appropriate relationship between talented artists and people who want to interview them, get their help becoming famous, hang out with them, and in other ways deprive the talented artist of the private space needed to create?

Dylan also addresses his own attitude to those he leaves behind in “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” the final track of his 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home.

Dylan begins the final stanza of the song with these lines:

“Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you”

This is similar to “Long Time Gone” and adds some credence to those who interpret the identity of “Baby Blue” as Dylan himself. But Dylan’s poetic abilities have greatly increased. The second line has impressive assonance as he repeats the sound of a vowel:

“Forget the dead you’ve left”

Dylan has also gone from not thinking about those whose lives he has passed to actively trying to forget them, to erase them as if their existence in his mind will interfere in his art. He has a realization that most people are stuck in their lives and won’t explore in the way he thinks is crucial to artistic creation.

Finally, consider “I Want You” on Blonde on Blonde. The album has been inadequately recognized for its Christian content. This is pertinent for the lines to be examined. Those lines are:

“Now all my fathers, they’ve gone down
True love they’ve been without it
But all their daughters put me down
’Cause I don’t think about it.”

In these lines, Dylan is talking about how his Jewish fathers, that is his ancestors, have been without a belief in Christian love, which Dylan asserts is the “true love.” Reminded of this by Jewish women, the daughters of the fathers, Dylan says he doesn’t even think about it. There seems to be a simple indifference in these lines. It’s possible to read some cruelty into the lines, some angry refusal to even think about the long Jewish genealogy that led to his birth.

As these lines indicate, Dylan the artist wants to be alone with his own mind and to do so needs to stop caring, to forget, to ignore, to willfully be indifferent to others. It seems as though it’s a sad way to live, but perhaps one filled with the necessary mental isolation to see what others can’t see, to find language that others don’t hear, and to transform tunes that others hear only in the familiar way.

James Franco and David Lehman to Host Reality TV: America's Next Top Poet [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

Fox network announced today that it will headline its fall programming with "America's Next Top Bard."

In the pilot, contestants are asked to memorize and recite a soliloquy from Hamlet, to write a bad sonnet on a quotation to be disclosed from Susan Sontag's literary essays, and to take part in the "Instant Haiku" round. Veteran impresario Bob Holman and chanteuse Stacey Kent join Franco and Lehman as hosts and judges.

Forthcoming episodes will focus on competitors representing elite colleges, corporations, and television networks. The celebrity competitors in the pilot are Kate Mara, Josh Charles, and Elisabeth Moss, pictured at left, a Los Angeles native, who will turn thirty-two on July 24.

Lehman explained that the thematic unity of the pilot derives from T. S. Eliot's characterization of April as "the cruelest month."

"That's as much as I can say right now," said Lehman.

Subsequent episodes will follow the format similar to other "America's Top" reality programs: a large pool of aspiring poets will be winnowed down over the course of a season to one standout winning bard. Participants will be matched with poetry mentors who will advise them on developing a "voice," adhering to poetic forms while inventing new ones, writing a convincing bio note, and applying makeup for an author's photo. The winning prizes will include publication in The New Yorker "Page Turner" blog, an off-site reading at an upcoming AWP conference, and lunch with an esteemed poet of the winner's choice.

Judges will come from the ranks of former guest editors of The Best American Poetry. Rumors have circulated that Bill and Hillary Clinton will be reunited with former White House guests Rita Dove, Robert Pinsky, and Robert Hass to judge the crucial fifth elimination episode. Matthew Weiner, creater of the popular Mad Men series, who recently disclosed in a Paris Review interview that from ninth grade on he "wrote poetry compulsively," is likely to anchor at least one episode as a judge.

Watch this space for more details as they come!

-- sdh

Catullus # 53 translated by Molly Arden

Listening to the learned Calvus
castigate, with many an oratorical flourish,
the demagogue Vatinius,
a man in the crowd lifted his hands
in astonishment, and said,
"God, that little prick can talk!"

-- translated by Molly Arden

Tom Selleck to Run for Governor of NY [by Walter Carey]

 

The Hollywood press was stunned to learn last night that Tom Selleck, who plays police commish Frank Reagan in CBS's hit drama "Blue Bloods," will be running in the Republican primary to earn the nomination to oppose Governor Andrew Cuomo in the election in November.

It is no secret that Selleck's success as Frank Reagan has translated brilliantly on the commercial front. It's Tom's voice you hear in various commercials, including one that asks you "what's team effort worth" and another that sells folks on reverse mortgages. Selleck's political ambitions have been bruited about since last August, when Linda Reagan's sudden elimination from the series caused a flurry of speculation including the possibility that she was involved in an effort to draft Frank Reagan to run for mayor of New York City, a  move that would have been widely applauded by the cops and firemen whom Mayor De Blasio has offended.

Nevertheless Frank's decision surprised even old Reagan hands such as Abigail Baker and Garrett Moore. The turning point in Frank's thinking came about as a direct result of Cynthia Nixon's recent announcement that she will challenge Governor Andrew Cuomo for the Democratic party nomination. The former "Sex and the City" star is widely presumed to be a surrogate for De Blasi in his ongoing feud with Mr Cuomo..

Ms. Nixon, no relation to Richard  Nixon, quipped that if only someone named Kennedy would run for the Republican nomination, there could be a replay of the 1960 presidential election with roles reversed.

According to the Nixon campaign, the effort  to normalize the porn industry by depicting call girls as "sex workers" and feminist heroines has been jeopardized by Stormy Daniels as opposed to Bree Daniels as played by Jane Fonda in Klute, which is credited for giving a certain prestige to the oldest profession.at the time when Richard Nixon was in office.

Just as Cynthia Nixon's very name evokes the image of the thirty-seventh president, Frank Reagan's moniker brings to mind the feel good era of Ronald Reagan. This is the argument that won over Selleck. Garrett Moore wonders whether a run for Albany is a smart move for his boss, though he adds, unconvincingly, "I could be wrong."

None of this fazes Selleck, who reports with a characteristic sigh that when he received a call from the Cuomo campaign from someone saying he was calling "for Andrew," Tom told the caller to please wait half a minute. Then, when he returned to the phone, he said, "Sorry, Andrew's not here."

Continue reading . . . 

New Trilling Essay Talk of the Town [by David Lehman]

The emergence of a previously unknown and uncharacteristically fiery essay by Lionel Trilling is all the buzz in intellectual circles. Our stringers at far-flung camupuses report the excitement at faculty clubs and academic production centers where Trilling's essays in criticism, particularly those written between 1940 and his death in 1975, command a respect accorded to few contemporaries, not because he had a penchant for oracular pronouncements (he did not) but because of the nuanced style of exposition in his writing, which reflected a mind of immense subtlety, irony, and complexity. By indirections he found directions out.

The reputation for what champions admired as subtlety (and detractors considerd coyness) may change with the posthumous appearance of an essay Trilling was said to have begun in 1967 but never completed to his satisfaction. The essay's working title was "I Hate the Liberals." Victor Mathis, the archivist who discovered the draft in Trilling's papers, insisted that marginal handwritten comments in the legendary Columbia prof's distinctive script imply "that this jest was a place-holder for an ultimate title along the lines of 'The Liberal Dilemma in an Age of Economic Decline'."

That Trilling, author of "The Liberal Imagination," had commenced on an essay critical of New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay and of what was vulgarly known as "limousine liberalism," a phrase Trilling dissects, made news wherever talking heads shmooze. "It's like an intellectual version of Tom Wolfe's outing of Leonard Bernstein's black panther party as 'radical chic'," said Jenna Clauss of the Brookings Institute. Marvin Murdeck of the McLuhan School of Publc Information emphasized that the title, though evidently a joke Trilling enjoyed, was "deliberately reductive of his thoughts on the whole question of political hypocrisy among union-smashing NIMBY elites who are incredibly full of shit but should not be cariacatured nevertheless."

Handmade signs declaring "I Hate the Liberals" have sprung up in affluent parts of Ann Arbor, Madison, Colorado Springs, Ithaca, Providence, Rhode Island, and Evanston, Illinois. Some say this is happening in the spirit of a joke. "It's post-modernism, man," said Josh Lucas, a freshperson at Northwestern, who has not yet declared a major but is leaning toward sociology. But there are those who see in the outpouring of anti-liberal sentiment the hyperbolic release of impulses long repressed. Professor Leon Elson, the Hayte-Jacques Professor of Applied Kenesiology at Florida Ache, compares the "I Hate the Liberals" fad with people screaming out the windows, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more." Elson's point: "It's not so much a matter of art following life, or life following art, but life following life, and art, art, depending on how you define it."

continue reading here.