The emphasis was on his paintings. In 1937 he produced The Dream and Lie of Franco, a three-sheet volume of panel sketches accompanied by prose poems—really, a comic strip, if we're being honest. I only went there once or twice to meet this tall Swede in his paint-streaked foreman’s outfit, who spoke three languages fluently, and yet employed each with a different tone of reticence. Maybe you've heard of that? \rThe point I’m trying to make about public persona is that it misleads the public as to the true nature of the poetry. deposits always go to fix the floors. If you have to annotate a text you'll be expected to write down comments, ideas and explanations next to the text itself. Yep. \rOne thing I would like to expand on (this evening I hope) is that I have never really understood the importance of this paradigm (much in evidence in the above discussion) - "difficulty vs. transparency", or poems "about something" vs. poems "about the process" of getting to that something (or not getting to it). John Lennon: Published in Liverpool music mag Mersey Beat on the 27 Feb 1964, ‘The Tales of Hermit Fred’ and ‘The Land… Poetry would begin to construct its own parallel universe. Storytelling is a part of humanity, and we all engage with it in some capacity every single day. Just one in particular. Not published until 2012 at the insistence of her son Sean Lennon, Invisible Flower tells a tale of hidden beauty and the one person—‘Smelty John’—who notices it (the use of the name John is mere coincidence; the piece was written several years before even meeting Lennon). No self-doubt there, whatever the secret demons that beset him in his heart.\rChristopher, Adding to applause, Martin for a beautifully written post. \rThe sheen of moon took the business of night \rover, installed somewhere a cistercian box, \rthe heavenly pallor of papers finally cities \rinvolved with darkness - small things \rfrom earthly books our union kept in a version\rsuited to lower takes, away with too much \rsummer under the night, and reserved, giving \rmore than it takes - I come with John\rMichael Robbins.\rSo what?\rlove you really. Ironically Latin, which had continued to develop beyond the classical period began to fade as a civic, academic and theological language during the Renaissance. Based on the novel by Carl Sagan, it's about a young female radio astronomer (Jodie Foster) who is studying the huge hum that fills outer space in an effort to find a single 'message' sound, one that can detach itself from the clutter to become something else---something relevant, significant, communicative, helpful perhaps, hopeful even, almost like a friend. When you are high on nitrous oxide, you say whatever comes into your head, like, "As One Put Drunk into a Packet Boat!" Ashbery's dilemma, his great split, his failure to be popular in general while being wildly loved within po-biz, is the odd-looking Flower of Modernism.\rThomas, Travis,\r"How much longer shall I be able to inhabit the divine sepulcher of life, my love"\r"I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free. \rSo then the genius, John Ashbery, goes ahead and writes the poem, 'As One Put Drunk...' careful not to say another word about boats or being drunk. Many other films were narrative-based, like Batman Dracula (1964), produced without DC Comics' permission and now long gone, but credited as being the first campy depiction of the Caped Crusader. And the body's...the photo's...resonance, to me at least, to the Youtube poem that Annie Finch posted on her other thread here - (whispered from a rooftop in Teheran this week, while shouts of the quotidian filled the flickering dark below that voice) -- what more may we ask of poetry, on this day? If you stopped 50,000 Americans randomly on the street, I'd wager not one would know any of these lines. \rhttp://www.ou.edu/worldlit/onlinemagazine/2007May/20quintais-earl.pdf\rMartin, Thanks for that, Martin, and I'll follow up the URL and get back to you at an appropriate moment.\rAlso, of course I'm new here--indeed I'm new to everything. For the arts wanting ongoing conversations with one another. \rAs to photography, by returning from digital to analogue I’ve come to see analogue as a kind of “slow art”. Oh yeah, and this: Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d'Or are both considered hallmarks of the experimental film genre, and with good reason. . Altafish, Babel, Shylock... machine translators guaranteed to make babble out of whatever you feed them. Later we’d make dinner, drink wine, and talk about his paintings. i have to apologize and correct myself--he knew OF tsvetaeva, which in itself is rare enough. It can all get a bit on the airy fairy side. But such a thing would be impossible--it would expose the poet as a fraud, and the lovely phrase, 'as one put drunk into a packet boat' would be spoiled forever. The poet's drafts or ordered desk; the patient image maker waiting for lightening, or painting over layers; whether it takes an instant or a lifetime. Having done so you wait. He also wrote the short story, ‘Bhikharini’ in 1877 and the poem collection, ‘Sandhya Sangit’ in 1882. "\r"The lake a lilac cube. I think of it more as Boba Fett vs. Cliff Clavin in the Bachelorette. \rYou then apologise for having to tell me your bald truth, anding on a maxim all those in the closure-based SoQ would heartily welcome - that's how it is - for you maybe, but not me.\rIt is interesting, in the week we are all celebrating the outpouring on twitter of those agitating for political change in Iran, that a person on a poetry blog waffling what in the cosmic scheme and earthly reality, is totally harmless opinion - that you seek to curtail this Freedom of Speech, not advocating anything which could be remotely construed as contentious in the real world, existing entirely in print, text you are under no obligation to read and which takes less than five seconds out of your life to scroll past.\rFirst you come and have a pop at Brady for speaking the truth as he sees it, not seeking to counter what he says by the very methods of democratic debate ( i assume) you have at the center of your practice as a bore, by writing words, which you are unable, unwilling or too lazy to compose here, using the pitiful excuse that this perfectly suited medium of exchange is somehow not the venue for democratic ping pong between consenting poetry lovers.\rI find it odd, here we are, all working at various levels and in various degrees of seriousness, in the contemporary Poetry biz, which is entirely formed by and run along competitive lines, where Prize and Winning is (almost) the sole measure of poetic success to most, and yet one of the very operators at the heart of the industry, a sinecured near-ollamh with wit and intelligence, refuses to play the game of speech in print.\rYou can't counter the eloquence of Brady by composition, so cast him (and me) as anti-intellectuals because we are both widely read in areas you are not, whilst offering zero evidence that you are doing anything other than mid-level bluffing.\rIt's a game Robbins and if you don't like what you read, written in a spirit of good natured and healthy competitiveness by people who have learned how to play the game of encouraging others whilst ignoring the goading which inevitably comes when you are in any way good - for the purpose of bettering ourselves as bores who are here for one reason only at this level of professionalism:\rTo enjoy ourselves by writing stuff which takes us further and further into understanding Poetry, and to take pride in whatever elegance and eloquence appears as we practise writing in order to become a poet with a practice.\rAnd the practice of a poet invoplves what?\rwriting. You've heard about Campbell's Soup Cans, Green Coca-Cola Bottles, the first Velvet Underground LP and the concept "15 minutes of fame," but the King of Pop Art didn't just vibrantly reproduce commodities/celebrities, design album covers and coin adages. Scan the poem and delve a bit deeper into the subject matter. So let me revise my yawn to a co-sign. He is always shifting and adapting himself, never staying longer than a few weeks or a couple of months in one setting. The novel, the essay, reportage, even the printing of gossip grew along with the growth of literacy and the mechanization of publishing. It seems primitive song and chant don’t account, at least not fully, for that affinity.\rAnd here’s from one of my dictionaries:\roverarching |ˌōvər'är ch i ng |\radjective [ attrib. It’s still in the “other recent posts” section, at the bottom of the page, “The Fallacy of Rejecting Closure.” I take up photography there. I haven't picked this one up myself, but there's a webpage dedicated to nothing but quotes from the book. Part of moving abroad and removing myself from the scene was to see if I could survive poetically without my supports. This is why he has never caught on with the general public, while having great opportunities to do so, being so feted by the poetry establishment for so long. \rI guess I don't see what your disagreement on this point with me is. Where and when I can. It has come into the world, a triumph, and lives in glory by itself and alone. \rmargo. Ashbery is almost erudition itself. Concentrated. The poem calls for greater social awareness and pushes people to think about the world as their ‘hometown.’ Check out the short film over at Ono’s website imaginepeace.com. I lucked out when I was there. There are at least a hundred of them. There's nothing else beside the weather, button up and bother.\rThat's one of the hugest ironies of the Empire, that such clumsy, local people could have done it! \rI wrote that PL lived and died "a very unified and sensible identity," but I wasn't implying by that that he was "integrated" (what is more "individuated!") True, much of his film work consists of adaptations, but this doesn't mean the man has no understanding of narrative fiction—if you're a good director, you have to. In 1921, in Moscow, he exhibited three monochrome canvases, Pure Red Color, Pure Blue Color, and Pure Yellow Color. Shift to your typical painter’s studio: the smell of turpentine and oils, dust, canvas, glue, cigarette smoke. The sister of 19th century 'Dial' poet Christopher Peace Cranch (whose 'Correspondences' sounds like Baudelaire's) married T.S. Already his Bauhaus inspired canvases (Kandinsky, Klee) from Mercer Street, with their delicate surrealist dance of suspended figures, were exploding into heavier and thicker forms with chewed edges and boldly stenciled overlays, cryptic traffic signals, grillworks, screaming color-rattling heads, the canvases larger and the paint more thickly applied. Is that like daytime and nighttime bathroom visits?\rAshbery-ism is a device, like nitrous oxide. But Letters ought to be larger than this.\rI speak up only because I sincerely feel the insidious nature of Ashbery-ism is real and the damage it is doing to intellectual discourse is real, and larger than anyone can know. Please advise.\rMartin\rhttp://classicalperiodclassics.edublogs.org/2009/06/17/poets-and-painters-foremost-foremost-foremost-denigrating-harriet-the-blog-foremost-the-poetry-foundation/#comments, Good stuff, Martin Earl. No, I'm not kidding. I've made notes to follow up on and get back to the essay on come Saturday.\rTerreson. The Zen masters said it took a lifetime to make one stroke well. ", Thank you Michael for this bit; it's wonderfully lucid and dovetails with what Ashbery has recently said, that if he has a subject, it's time.\rMartin. sky at the same time. Anne Sexton's poem about van Gogh's "The Starry Night" presents an ominous scene: The night is a "rushing beast" and a "great dragon" that "boils with eleven stars." I love your description of the “careful overlays of color”, but some painters are hardly careful and work at breakneck speed. - who replied:\rYes.\r..and got the classic response:\rSo what?\r~\rWhen i wrote my last post i had not seen your expansion about the night and day \rYou mistake the "you" for the *i* behind the man behind the mask acting the maggot here Mickey boy. The bound feet image has had no response from you, Michael. Dylan Thomas was a huge, heroic bag of selfish wind that came out in full song, and even today you can meet up with him all over the place in Wales, and even more so in Connemara.\rWas he posing to bring all that into the reading hall and recording studio after he was famous? The word "phenomenology" has meanings! And if there are any other visual artists who took to the pen not mentioned here, shout out in the comments section. It is a bigger problem than all of us. Painters, on the other hand, have always looked to poets to articulate what we might call their sublime backwardness. Michael Robbins \r"This is a blog not a lecture hall"\ranti-intellectual isn't it, the behaviour of a runner away from the mountain, surely poetic learning is not something that can only happen if you hand over thousands of bucks and have some pedogog try and get you worshipping at the altar of their genius in person.\rI must be doing summat right if you react this way over a simple speculative discourse being ventriliquized in a safe, controlled environment of the New Free University where a fully ticketed ollamh sniffer sits and sings to sue the suit of one's whole art and soul via the medium of write-through of one of Ashers finest - yer young fogey. , one would know any of these lines Stundenglas, by consensus, the master-key, entire! Such as death and immortality fever pitch, adding a dramatic tension that beyond... Last ten years he has never written a poem which is memorable as a matter of course get... 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