Your knotted hair
\nAround your shoulders
\nA shawl the color of the spectrum<\/p>\n
Like that marvelous thing you haven’t learned yet.<\/i><\/p>\n
J.A., “The Skaters,” p223<\/i>
\n
\nToday I was reading from The Double Dream of Spring<\/i> while
\nwatching the snow fall and missing a meeting I was supposed to be at, but had forgotten about.<\/p>\n
A lot of the poems mention learning. Thinking about learning, I remembered the above lines, my favorite lines from “The Skaters.” <\/p>\n
I felt like the poems were instructions for my life. Undecipherable at times, but when have I demanded that something be decipherable? <\/p>\n
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.” <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
There’s a theme of repetition here, the “vicus of recirculation” just like in Finnegan’s Wake<\/i>. 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. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
It’s a happy learning. “Evening in the Country” – “I am still completely happy.” <\/p>\n
The encounter is strong and fresh as climbing into the boughs of a cherry tree in bloom one chilly April day in Washington DC. <\/p>\n