Five Years On: The Day JA Died

[Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, and John Ashbery – (Photographer Unknown, circa 1965)]

“….exquisite mind cartoons that could be heard with eyes closed, the voice perfectly ordinary with the slight edge of extravagant conversational camp, a mind artifice not unnatural to hypnagogic revery, deceptive, till you hear the chasm landscapes and awkward universes created and contradicted in vast gas-deposit shocking trivial universal mind.”
--- Allen Ginsberg – from an introduction to a reading by John Ashbery, at Naropa Institute, 1975.

Hear Ashbery’s reading (along with W.S.Merwin) on that occasion here

John Ashbery’s passing last weekend continues to send shockwaves.

A selection of sites – From the writers at The New Yorker –  Larissa MacFarquhar‘s aptly-titled, “The Gentleness of John Ashbery“,  Alex Ross “Driving Country Roads With John Ashbery“,  Paul Muldoon, “John Ashbery Changed The Rules of American Poetry, Ben Lerner‘s “John Ashbery’s Whisper Out of Time”,  and Dan Chiasson, “Postscript”

Rae Armantrout, and David Orr, in The New York Times, Tania Ketenjian in The Guardian,  (see also Mark Ford in The Guardian), Matthew Zapruder  in the San Francisco Chronicle

David Lehman at Best American Poetry has made available a space for an on-going series of remembrances – see also the recollections there of Archie Rand,  John Emil Vincent, Terence Winch, and (on his own blog) Michael Lally 

Andrew Epstein and his Locus Solus – The New York School of Poets, specializing in this field, is a must-go-to resource

For the rest of this September 2017 post, click here
The Allen Ginsberg Project's, September 8, 2017 Friday Weekly Round-Up -332 - https://allenginsberg.org/2017/09/f-332/

Comments

[Simon Pettet]

Please make clear that this excerpted post comes, not from the International Times but from The Allen Ginsberg Project's, September 8, 2017 Friday Weekly Round-Up -332 - https://allenginsberg.org/2017/09/f-332/
Prior to that . September 3, 2017, The Allen Ginsberg Project (as noted) had announced the sad news of John';s passing - here - https://allenginsberg.org/2017/09/john-ashbery-1927-2017/
Further Allen Ginsberg Project postings on John - here (also noted) - https://allenginsberg.org/2014/09/rarities-from-the-naropa-archives-1-ashbery-merwin/ - and here - https://allenginsberg.org/2016/01/vintage-naropa-audio-john-ashbery-and-dick-gallup-1976/
Of particular note are a July 28 2014 birthday posting - https://allenginsberg.org/2014/07/happy-birthday-john-ashbery/ - and a note the following month - "John Ashbery and Purposeful Disjunction" - https://allenginsberg.org/2014/08/expansive-poetics-101-john-ashbery-purposeful-disjunction/
not to mention this - https://allenginsberg.org/2011/04/rimbaud-via-ashbery-2/
5 years on - The Allen Ginsberg Project mourns the loss of a dear friend

[David Lehman]

Thank you for the necessary corrective, Simon.