what I set up for myself comes together and then it falls apart
together and apart
together and apart
like mini stages set for these small plays
haphazard shrines
or gestures at the altar
first empty
then cluttered
then empty
then cluttered
rhythmically irregular
not at all like waves
or seasons
or music
nor intentional
I’m not that interested in most of it
finding it all too difficult
difficile
and useless
inutile
and lonesome
partaking neither of movements
nor manifestos
nor main streams
for
I’m not what I am
and I am what I
am not

Drifts of snowdrops, moist gray of approaching rainstorm, dust blowing across the highway, the shy bridge flashing its green strands of light …

I need the company of a poet in the office. And a book. And a table in the pavilion, in a sunny spot. And a few moments to myself. Coffee. Scraps of accomplishment. A fantasy wind of brief scope in a minor key.

Approaching everything from the side. Merging, with a blind spot in my rear view mirror. Observing the chain link fence, woven with two separate handmade shrines of permanent flowers and leaves. Swerving.

Approaching nothingness when what I want is a grand moral vision.

Approaching sleep.

The writing is thin and sheer, scraps of worn cloth fluttering over the days of the week. They can’t be assembled into anything, they are too weak to weave a needle through without disintegration into threads.

I want to trust it, where it goes, when how and where it goes.

It’s taken a long time to realize that I have something to say.

Inside there was like a bare room, or an alphabet, an alphabet of clemency. Now at last you knew what you were supposed to know. The words formed from it and the sentences formed from them were dry and clear, as though made of wood. There wasn’t too much of any one thing. The feelings never wandered off into a private song or tried to present the procession of straightforward facts as something like a pageant: the gorgeous was still unknown.

J.A., “The System,” p342

It reminds me of writing here, all the decisions that have to be made.

Your knotted hair
Around your shoulders
A shawl the color of the spectrum

Like that marvelous thing you haven’t learned yet.

J.A., “The Skaters,” p223

Today I was reading from The Double Dream of Spring while
watching the snow fall and missing a meeting I was supposed to be at, but had forgotten about.

A lot of the poems mention learning. Thinking about learning, I remembered the above lines, my favorite lines from “The Skaters.”

I felt like the poems were instructions for my life. Undecipherable at times, but when have I demanded that something be decipherable?

Learning as a symbol. I don’t think J.A. really puts much stock in learning-learning. See “And You Know” where the last line is “And the night, the endless, muggy night that is invading our school.”

But there is some kind of learning to be done. I can barely sense the learning, it’s in the poetry, I see it in the repetition of symbols (words), working with the same words in different settings.

There’s a theme of repetition here, the “vicus of recirculation” just like in Finnegan’s Wake. Why am I continually surprised to realize that artists are so repetitive? I always seem to think artworks were supposed to be “original,” meaning never to repeat themselves. In Ashbery, words recur recur recur.

One of those words is “learning.” Another is “night.” I could list quite of a few of them. I develop a private meaning for myself and feel comfortable whenever I see the word again, like a signpost.

It’s a happy learning. “Evening in the Country” – “I am still completely happy.”

The encounter is strong and fresh as climbing into the boughs of a cherry tree in bloom one chilly April day in Washington DC.

Susan’s Shultz’s intro to The Tribe of John; Ashbery and Contemporary Poetry. She calls Shapiro’s book “quirky.” I was discouraged by this article’s engagement in some kind of aggressive literary war I didn’t even know was going on.

There needs to be a book, something like Simic’s book about Joseph Cornell, which responds to Ashbery in terms of the art.

Sadly, the books are due back at the library March 18th. And this is the Final Renewal, as stamped in red on the renewal slip. I know, this is not a big problem, I could check them out again in a week or even purchase them. But I choose to look at it romantically, like I’m being torn from the arms of the poetry I love.

Look up Ann Lauterbach, discussed in the link above:

Lauterbach herself, who remarked in an interview, “My affinities to Ashbery are certainly there, although I think of myself as more psychological in tone and perhaps more intent and intense; I do not have his laconic, insouciant, inclusive temperament. As I think Ashbery is our great poet, it would be odd not to have learned from him, but as with all great presences, the question is: what part to learn?”

I might also have to dip into Wallace Stevens again, maybe I’ll find him more congenial this time.

We had reached that stage in our perennial evolution where holy thoughts no longer exist and one can speak one’s mind freely, and the night shot back an answering fragrance: too far to the stars, but it was here in its intimacy that wraps you in permissiveness, leaving you free as it wanes to learn more about your special thoughts or any ideas you might have.

J.A., “The New Spirit,” p333

Dismantling holy thoughts, leveling, deconstructing, smashing, making fun of with multiplicities, and competing divine imagerie.

Left with very little, as far as I can see. Little specks of light, too far.

Writing during the day, not at night. Absorbed in the business, the business of believing.

Longing for that permissiveness, that intimate ear of air, that listens to me, like the Ideal Adult that wanes, that wants to hear my special thoughts and any ideas I might have.

Back to the instruction manual which has made me dream of Guadalajara.

J.A., “The Instruction Manual,” p10

Risky risky risky risky. Commentary, I mean.

I didn’t understand this poem as a parody until I read Shapiro. Then I started to realize the intent behind the flatness of the sentences, the lack of nuance, the crayon box color scheme, and the enervating sensation that nothing is happening.

It’s embarrassing to admit I didn’t recognize the parody. I knew something was going on, but I didn’t know what it was.

I like the poem better now that I see the parody. I prefer parody to that shutter blinded open mouthed earnestness of most poetry. On the other hand, I feel ashamed of that preference. Shouldn’t one be open hearted and naive, not scheming and split tongued?

It’s hard to decide to write with the true degree of parody that I feel. Isn’t it shaming. Isn’t it making fun, isn’t it saying Your way is bad. I want to write in parody of journal writing. I have written parody of journal writing. But not really.

And the instruction manual bounces back and forth – to Guadalajara, to the manual, back to Guadalajara, in the office tower, down to the street, back up to the bell tower, back to the instruction manual. And isn’t “instruction manual” (the title) describing also how not to be, what’s past and through the parody? Isn’t the parody pointing out something that’s very true, teaching you toward a different place?

I’m not being careful in putting my thoughts into words, I’m at my desk, and I’m supposed to be working on the “questionnaire.”