National Poetry Month card #24

Posted on April 24, 2009 by Dave Bonta

National Poetry Month greeting card - John Ashbery

I’m doing one of these a day until the end of April. To send it, copy the permalink or the image file link into an email, tweet, Facebook DM, etc. — or just download and make free with the image.

About Dave Bonta

Dave Bonta (bio) crowd-sources his problems by following his gut, which he shares with one quadrillion of his closest microbial friends --- a tight-knit, symbiotic community comprising some 500 different species of bacteria, fungi, and protozoa.
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7 Responses to National Poetry Month card #24

  1. Hugh says:
    April 24, 2009 at 11:50 pm

    I had to think about this one for a while. Then, bonk, I got it (I think).

  2. lucas says:
    April 25, 2009 at 11:36 am

    Don Paterson’s deliciously cranky collection of aphorisms and other short prose pieces, I read a piece that made me think, fairly or unfairly, of Ashbery:

    “Our American genius is in town…no one can recall the title of a single poem he has written, yet his eminence goes unquestioned; were he to write one really memorable line, his reputation would collapse. Nothing disturbs the perfectly unreflective surface of his composure, not the lowest brilliancy.”

    Ouch.

  3. JMartin says:
    April 25, 2009 at 3:03 pm

    I’ve never understood the raves for Ashbery’s brand of smug and glossy gibberish.

    His least annoying use: disaggregate a phrase, and use to caption the back of the book picture in The Sophisticated Traveler.

  4. dale says:
    April 25, 2009 at 6:03 pm

    Whew! So it’s really okay not to dote on Ashbery? I never disliked his verse, I just never liked it. But I assumed that just meant there was something wrong with me, since so many people seemed to think he was the Boss Poet of Now. I can’t imagine memorizing one of his poems. Why would one bother?

    (To me that’s what a good poem is: one that I would like to memorize. Even if I don’t actually do it. As it happens, everyone on this comment thread — whose poetry I’ve read — has written poems I’d like to memorize.)

    • Dave says:
      April 25, 2009 at 6:58 pm

      My position is, if people like that kind of poetry, great — I’m glad Ashbery is there for you. But please do the rest of us a favor and quit acting like your boy is somehow superior to all those poets for whom meaning and sincerity aren’t dead yet.