Though some of this material may still be painful . . . or confusing . . . today's class conversation was a lively and detailed close-reading of Ashbery's "What is Poetry," and I hope it'll serve as both an example of how to work your way through a poem, detail by detail, and as a succinct statement of Ashbery's poetics.Please read these poems for Wednesday's class, and come with questions and particular pieces you'd like to discuss. I trimmed this list down a little, and a number of these poems are exceedingly brief works. I'm hoping that maybe we can analyze a few of these poems on Wednesday, and in addition to our discussion of "Litany" and "The Skaters" on Friday, we should have time to look at a few additional pieces: "Soonest Mended," perhaps "Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape" and whatever else you'd like to talk about.
from As We Know (1979)
Many Wagons Ago (660)
As We Know (661)
My Erotic Double (667)
A Box and Its Contents (675) MP3
The Cathedral Is (676) MP3
I Had Thought Things Were Going Along Well (676)
Out Over the Bay the Rattle of Firecrackers (676)
We Were on the Terrace Drinking Gin and Tonics (676)
A Love Poem (680)
from Shadow Train (1981)
Qualm (704)
Untilted (713)
Written in the Dark (716)
from A Wave (1984)
At North Farm (733) MP3
The Songs We Know Best (734) MP3
37 Haiku (762)
Cups with Broken Handles (774)
from April Galleons (1987)
A Snowball in Hell (814)
Note: "The Songs We Know Best" has rather strange and charming origins. As you read in the New Yorker profile, Ashbery's a big music fan, and it's an integral part of his writing process, however his tastes run almost exclusively towards classical music. "The Songs We Know Best," however, was inspired by a chance encounter — in a New York City taxi cab — with Peaches and Herb's 1978 chart-topper "Reunited," whose vocal melody was so infectious that Ashbery adopted it for this poem. If you're not familiar with the song, listen along for a verse or two, and then read along in your books:
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