Enough with the travel already ... Rerun #2

RERUN #2 John Ashbery: BEHIND THE MASK


Big Frank has been reading the poetry of John Ashbery. This is poetry that doesn't lend itself to themes, or (as Frost said of Stevens) bric-a-brac. This is poetry of a purer nature that can, if you allow it, wash over you like the waves of the ocean coming in and in: what does that mean? And what does it mean in connection with your thoughts of the last time you were in that ocean, and then the person with whom you were, or else not, and - don't forget about your towel and what's on it . . . back . . . on the beach. The beach of your youth? The beach as in skipping along in slow motion, or the beach as in this whale ain't going nowhere. OK, enough of that. Big Frank is not going to give entire poems but rather snippets, just a few favorite sections of John Ashbery poems - once you read them - you will have to have more (or else not).


from A Man of Words


Those tangled versions of the truth are
Combed out the snarls ripped out
And spread around. Behind the mask
Is still a continental appreciation
Of what is fine, rarely appears and when it does is already
Dying on the breeze that brought to the threshold
Of speech. The story worn out from telling.
All diaries are alike, clear and cold, with
The outlook for continued cold. They are placed
Horizontal, parallel to the earth
Like the unencumbering dead. Just time to reread this
And post past slips fingers, wishing you were
there.


from Grand Gallop

And now it is time to wait again.
Only waiting, the waiting: what fills up the time between?
It is another kind of wait, waiting for the wait to be ended.
Nothing takes up its fair share of time,
The wait is built into the things just coming into their own
Nothing is partially incomplete but the wait.
Invests everything like a climate.
What time of day is it?
Does anything matter?
Yes for you must wait to see what it is really like,
This event rounding the corner
Which will be unlike anything else and really
Cause no surprise: it's too ample.


from Worsening Situation

. . .
One day a man called while I was out
and left this message: "You got the whole thing wrong
From start to finish. Luckily there's still time.
To correct the situation, but you must act fast.
See me at your earliest convenience. And please
Tell no one of this. Much besides your life depends on it."
I thought nothing of it at the time. . . .

Rerun #1, "The Gift"

Big Frank has been thinking of reruns. He doesn't actually have a TV, but he used to, and he can remember watching reruns of programs that were trotted out after the season's fare had all been run through. The reruns were the best what had been broadcast. So, Big Frank is going to run a few reruns of his posts. These are, what he thinks, are some of his best. Well, to be frank (Big Frank) they are his favorites. Here's the first:
________________________________________________________
Big Frank has been thinking lately about poetry. Why is it that the content of the poem is relayed at a slant? With prose the thought or feeling is laid out directly. The person says that they have this kind of idea or this kind of feeling. There is a label put on it and some examples and explanation put to it. With poetry there is a recognition that the idea or feeling is bigger than the explanatory power of words -the lexicon cannot carry the load. It is bigger than words, and so something more resonant is sought - images, symbols, metaphor, or ancedotes. It is the first three that most poets rely on, but the anecdote is very powerful when applied to something different. Here's an example from a great poem by Don Paterson:

The Gift

That night she called his name, not mine
And could not call it back.
I shamed myself and thought of the blind
girl in Kodiak

who stood on the stoop each night
to watch the daylight fade
and lift her child down to the gate
cut in the pallisade.

And what old caution love resigned
when through that misty stare
she passed her boy not to her bearskinned husband
but the bear.


Here we have a horrific story that is linked to one lover calling the other by the name of a previous lover. The irretrievable loss of that "gift" is captured in all its intractability in the story of the blind woman mistakenly handing the child - out of love - to the bear. This is poetry. It cannot compare in force or poignancy to a simple prose summary of the slip of tongue. Such poems are rare