R.I.P. John Ashbery

Fuck the trolls!
Get well soon, John.

These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance

To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try

To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.

And glad not to have invented
Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges

A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.

Well on the plus side my signed copy of his Selected Poems just went up in value.

Sorry to hear.

he'll have a surprise when he wakes up lol

That's a pity. One of the few remaining good poets.

I always wanted to like his work, but I could never decipher it. I never found Eliot or cummings hard to follow, but Ashbery is impossible.

But RIP, sir.

That's part of the point, really. He requires extensive re-reading. I rarely bother to try and decipher him unless I absolutely love the poem. I really like him for his voice, more than anything. He's intimate despite obfuscating himself.

proto rupi lovey dovey self empowering trash, like all post WWII poets

>He's intimate despite obfuscating himself.

I saw an interview with him once, and he said most critics thought he intentionally made his poems incomprehensible because of his (at the time) closeted homosexuality. Which is always possible.

Does anyone remember the title of a poem he did several decades ago about the start of the high-school football season in Ohio (I think)? I remember that one being fairly accessible by his standards, but I don't recall the name, and it doesn't appear to be among the handful of his best-known compositions.

I saw that interview as well. That his attempt at hiding himself carried over into his poetry and was ultimately inescapable for him.
I'm not sure about it. I think that's putting too much value on the individual behind the poems rather than the poems themselves.

Damn. Along with Walter Becker. What a horrible day.

RIP TO A LEGEND

dude, fuck. this makes me want to cry. why is this not stickied? terrible mods.

rest in peace.

F

Fucking great. Another one who should have gotten a Nobel, if the Nobel meant something.

RIP

F

When Eduard Raban, coming along the passage, walked into the
open doorway, he saw that it was raining. It was not raining much.
KAFKA, Wedding Preparations in the Country
The concept is interesting: to see, as though reflected
In streaming windowpanes, the look of others through
Their own eyes. A digest of their correct impressions of
Their self-analytical attitudes overlaid by your
Ghostly transparent face. You in falbalas
Of some distant but not too distant era, the cosmetics,
The shoes perfectly pointed, drifting (how long you
Have been drifting; how long I have too for that matter)
Like a bottle-imp toward a surface which can never be
approached,
Never pierced through into the timeless energy of a present
Which would have its own opinions on these matters,
Are an epistemological snapshot of the processes
That first mentioned your name at some crowded cocktail
Party long ago, and someone (not the person addressed)
Overheard it and carried that name around in his wallet
For years as the wallet crumbled and bills slid in
And out of it. I want that information very much today,

Can't have it, and this makes me angry.
I shall use my anger to build a bridge like that
Of Avignon, on which people may dance for the feeling
Of dancing on a bridge. I shall at last see my complete face
Reflected not in the water but in the worn stone floor of my bridge.

I shall keep to myself.
I shall not repeat others' comments about me.

When the world wakes up, it has a surprise lol

Where to start with him? Or just get the earlier Library of America?

It's sad he died, but his poems are literal word salad.

Every poem is a "literal word salad".

when he died he was surprised lol

Get his selected my man

His legacy is richer for never having to accept a Nobel.

Ashbery's poetry invites contemplation more than any contemporary poet I've read. His poems aren't about what they mean objectively, they're about what they mean subjectively, personally. I love reading his poetry because it makes me think. It doesn't necessarily make me think about the poem I just read, it makes me think about what the poem I just read made me think of.

At North Farm

Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.
But will he know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,
Give you the thing he has for you?

Hardly anything grows here,
Yet the granaries are bursting with meal,
The sacks of meal piled to the rafters.
The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish;
Birds darken the sky. Is it enough
That the dish of milk is set out at night,
That we think of him sometimes,
Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?

F

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I never got to meet him.

I only just found his poetry this year. Just got pic related in the mail a couple of weeks ago.

This sucks friends.

>why is this not stickied
>terrible mods

SECONDED!

lol

Somebody want to explain this one. I hate not knowing in-jokes about authors I like.

the ants user.... read about the ants

Late Echo
BY JOHN ASHBERY
Alone with our madness and favorite flower
We see that there really is nothing left to write about.
Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things
In the same way, repeating the same things over and over
For love to continue and be gradually different.

Beehives and ants have to be re-examined eternally
And the color of the day put in
Hundreds of times and varied from summer to winter
For it to get slowed down to the pace of an authentic
Saraband and huddle there, alive and resting.

Only then can the chronic inattention
Of our lives drape itself around us, conciliatory
And with one eye on those long tan plush shadows
That speak so deeply into our unprepared knowledge
Of ourselves, the talking engines of our day.

I look for ant mounds and find rabbit holes that
go everywhere and let me go nowhere. Face pressed to earth as though it were such that I that unbeknown, could go as the rabbit goes.

Down, I suppose. Then I'd know more of the depth of these holes. Paw scratched comfort.

Wow, what book is this from? It's far less obscure than most Ashbery I've read.

Can these fag mods sticky this ffs

Is this about santa?

It sure is pal

well, damn.

I was hoping he'd retire, not die.

All the same, is there going to be a complete works? Is there one already ?

I can't even imagine how lengthy that would end up being.
I wish he did another selected poems from 1985 and up.
I wonder what John himself thought. Whether he'd retire or die, I mean. Must've been something he thought a lot about. The theme of mortality is especially evident in his later poetry.

Yeah, definitely multi-volume.
Library of america has a new edition listed that ends at 2000, might cop both of theirs and fill the difference in with whatever else.

I didn't realize; I think I'll have to get that. I've read Commotion of the Birds and I really like it. Breezeway, on the other hand, is a mostly one-handed effort. That's all of his later stuff I've read but I believe most of his later stuff is hit or miss.
What is it you like about Ashbery? I always find it interesting to ask why people like him.

Truthfully, the sound of it all.
A lot of it I only get snatches of meaning or a complete misread. I'm not to great with poetry just yet, but Ashberry has always been at the back of my mind as a sort of end goal or later part of a path.
I really loved three poems, but didn't feel good about being "finished", if only because I so clearly didn't understand it.

I was hoping to get at least most of his works in a concise way so I could give him a real go without too much trouble.

That's really what I like about it too. The sound and Ashbery's voice. I said it earlier in the thread; he manages to be so intimate.
I wouldn't be worried about "getting it", I'm not sure anyone can really say they "get it" without relentless, extensive reading of Ashbery's works. One can pick up on the themes in his lines, but it's hard to say what a poem is finally getting at.
I haven't read Three Poems but I'd really like to. I've heard it's his most difficult work.
I look at poetry much differently than I look at prose, and it's helped me enjoy it more. Prose I can finish. I can never finish poetry, real poetry, anyway. Ashbery especially resists finishing.
Some Tress is his first and most conventional work, but understanding Some Trees doesn't help very much in grappling with later Ashbery because it's so different.

F.

Illuminate us then oh great grader

Just registering my regret, or paying my respects, user. The letter should have stood alone. Don't know why I slid a period in there but I did and there's no going back.

Goddamn I'm sad. He's one of the few contemps that stood comfortably next to the modernists. I hope more people start reading him due to the death meme.

Fair enough. I apologize for the hostilities, lad.
I hope they do, too. I think if more people read Ashbery poetry would be more widely read in general. As it is right now, most people I talk to about poetry that dislike it dislike it because they think of it as a puzzle they have to solve before they're allowed to enjoy it. The United States School System way of teaching poetry, anyway. There's no appreciation for aesthetic because we're taught we must solve the poem and then move onto the next. But the truth is that poetry takes time. It should be read slowly, and should be contemplated.

shit poet glad he died. jsut read hart crane instead

>implying mods
they won't even make one for Bloom

I respect the man for his translations. If his poetry was wiped from this world along with him it wouldn't matter.

That's unbelievably stupid... I think Ashbery's poetry is p shit but he's just about inarguably the most influential American poet post 1950

That is a fucking scathing indictment of post 50s American poetry.

Some stories survived the dynasty of the builders
But their echo was itself locked in, became
Anticipation that was only memory after all,
For the possibilities are limited.

Just because you don't like the guy doesn't mean he isn't influential

Who will fill his cute gay shoes?

Funny the comments here. More respect than not, which is good.
>And the face\ Resembles yours, the one reflected in the water.
RIP