What is Poetry, by John Ashbery

The medieval town, with frieze
Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow

That came when we wanted it to snow?
Beautiful images? Trying to avoid

Ideas, as in this poem? But we
Go back to them as to a wife, leaving

The mistress we desire? Now they
Will have to believe it

As we believed it. In school
All the thought got combed out:

What was left was like a field.
Shut your eyes, and you can feel it for miles around.

Now open them on a thin vertical path.
It might give us--what?--some flowers soon?

What is Poetry, by John Ashbery
 

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, by John Ashbery

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, by John Ashbery
 

I shall use may anger to build a bridge

Suppose, for a moment, that you're angry, so angry that you want to hurt people badly, maybe even kill them, and you want to destroy whatever is theirs. That's how angry you are.

Now, suppose, instead, that you construct something - a school, a railway, a bridge - from your anger.

Imagine, moreover, that people come gathering, after your construction is through, and they dance without any self consciousness and with complete joy.

Imagine that!
 

Wet Casements, by John Ashbery

A Rainy Day in Avignon

 

When Eduard Raban, coming along the passage, walked into the
open doorway, he saw that it was raining. It was not raining much.
 

~Franz Kafka

"Wedding Preparations in the Country"
 

The concept is interesting: to see, as though reflected
In streaming windowpanes, the look of others through
Their own eyes. A digest of their correct impressions of
Their self-analytical attitudes overlaid by your
Ghostly transparent face. You in falbalas
Of some distant but not too distant era, the cosmetics,
The shoes perfectly pointed, drifting (how long you
Have been drifting; how long I have too for that matter)
Like a bottle-imp toward a surface which can never be approached,
Never pierced through into the timeless energy of a present
Which would have its own opinions on these matters,
Are an epistemological snapshot of the processes
That first mentioned your name at some crowded cocktail
Party long ago, and someone (not the person addressed)
Overheard it and carried that name around in his wallet
For years as the wallet crumbled and bills slid in
And out of it. I want that information very much today,

Can't have it, and this makes me angry.
I shall use my anger to build a bridge like that
Of Avignon, on which people may dance for the feeling
Of dancing on a bridge. I shall at last see my complete face
Reflected not in the water but in the worn stone floor of my bridge.

I shall keep to myself.
I shall not repeat others' comments about me.

 

Wet Casements, by John Ashbery

 

Garden (5) Petal

Garden (4) Chocolate