dumbfoundry

Ashbery has been curating and rearranging this material for so long now -- since 1953, when his first book, ''Turandot and Other Poems,'' came out -- that, almost without our noticing, he himself has become a part of our mental furniture. Once thought to be willfully ''difficult'' and impenetrably obscure, Ashbery now, at 77, seems almost avuncular, the grand old man of American poetry, both wise and ironic -- the party guest he describes in one of his new poems, who is ''bent on mischief and good works with equal zest.'' We may not know much Ashbery by heart, but we recognize his voice the instant we hear it, because nobody else writes this way:

Attention, shoppers. From within the
inverted
commas of a strambotto, seditious
whispering
watermarks this time of day. Time to get
out
and, as they say, about.

But we were rolling along, digging the flow of Ashbery’s block-rockin beats and McGrath’s elegant prose, when we got to this part: “Some of the poems from his 1962 collection, “The Tennis Court Oath,” were so dense and allusive, and so full of wild leaps and jarring discontinuities, that they should have come with a surgeon general’s warning.” [beat] “Reading them gives you a headache.” Bazzaam! This is the type of joke Uncle Joey used to make on Full House. Now, cut it out, McGrath! Seriously.

This entry was posted by eeksypeeksy on Wednesday, March 09, 2005 at 9:22 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.