A great one gone from us today. Ashbery dead at 90.
His extraordinary proposition: that a poem is a poem.
So many years before I got that. When I did I saw in hindsight he had helped me to. (Haven’t yet managed to write one, but now I know what one looks like.)
No time for the post I want to write. So just this sweet bit from the NYT obit
Asked once about a poet’s proper relationship with his audience, Mr. Ashbery rejected the idea of deliberately “shocking” the reader, a tactic he compared to wearing deliberately outlandish clothing and which he dismissed as “merely aggressive.”
“At the same time,” he said, “I try to dress in a way that is just slightly off, so the spectator, if he notices, will feel slightly bemused but not excluded, remembering his own imperfect mode of dress.”
And this photo from same. Imagine the conversation they’d have had! or not!
Take care of each other. We don’t get a lot of time.
the art of compost 