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John Ashbery Reading- Freddy Parish
John Ashbery at the Brooklyn Public Library 4/19
-Freddy Parish John Ashbery is a very subtle writer. His meanings and humor are subtle. The beauty in his writing is subtle. It took me hearing him read to appreciate the delicacy in which he writes. His voice and articulation, though dry and also subtle, open portals into his poems. When reading his poetry I think I passed up whole reservoirs of thought and imagination, taking them for mere puddles. To be honest I found his poetry on the page to sometimes be pretentious, over-dramatic, sentimental, and cheesy. I now can read it differently. I no longer see any of those things. The pretension has turned to playfulness, the dramatics to fantastics, the sentimentality to heightened senses- the cheese became touching. That being said I would still much rather hear him read than read his work. He makes you listen closely, he takes you by surprise. I was baffled by the complexity of his seemingly cliched visuals, usually due to one minor brush stroke that throws the whole poem under strange light. In other words, he brings out details in everyday realism that produce surreal results. This is his success in poetry. I think poetry is what you notice (of course L. Schwartz would say, what you remember). If this is true Ashbery's is a poetry with a high powered zoom lens, a poetry of particles. After all, his volume of selected poems is called Notes from the Air. In prefacing the poem "Sons of the Desert," he revealed that many of the lines were taken from the british TV show Antique Road Show. He "loves to hear people talk about their antiques." I can't think of anything more boring or unpoetic, but Ashbery takes it, and through change of context and slight alterations, transforms the language into strange humor coated in a speech beautifully textured by rhythm. Ashbery seems constantly amused, like a kid who can see through peoples clothes. When he signed my book I said, "I was just gonna forge it, the line was so long." "You were gonna forge it?" "Yeah." I said. And he gave me that curled smile like on the back of his book (slightly creepy). It didn't seem like he was smiling at my joke. I got the feeling he was smiling at some part of it that I didn't even get.
categories [ Poetry Reviews ]
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