Intertexts for Ashbery’s “These Lacustrine Cities”

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That Escher up (or below or across) there reminds me of Borges's structure in "The Immortal," doors and stairs of timeless design and symmetry but often leading nowhere. Doors and stairs don't have to be practical features if you're building from the point-of-view of immortality. The builders sleep outside* that magnificent useless structure. As "The Immortal" seems to be Homer, this also presents an "idea" of literature as vision and enterprise.

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Thought of pairing Auden's lines with those from Ashbery. An exercise that not everyone might find agreeable:

Lakes × These Lacustrine Cities

Lake-folk require no fiend to keep them on their toes;
They are the product of an idea: that man is horrible, for instance,   

They leave aggression to ill-bred romantics
Who duel with their shadows over blasted heaths:
Into something forgetful, although angry with history.

A month in a lacustrine atmosphere
Would find the fluvial rivals waltzing not exchanging
The rhyming insults of their great-great-uncles.
Much of your time has been occupied by creative games

No wonder Christendom did not get really started
Till, scarred by torture, white from caves and jails,
Her pensive chiefs converged on the Ascanian Lake
We had thought, for instance, of sending you to the middle of the desert,
To a violent sea, or of having the closeness of the others be air   

And by that stork-infested shore invented
To you, pressing you back into a startled dream

The life of Godhead, making catholic the figure
Of three small fishes in a triangle.
You have built a mountain of something,Thoughtfully pouring all your energy into this single monument,   

Sounded out each of Auden's lines and looked for the closest resonance from those of Ashbery. I think Auden is more given to narrative, to a clear exposition of cause and effect. 

This is a unique topic for poetry (though not for anthropology): the features and beliefs of people as they develop communities alongside (or atop, astride) lakes. I think "Lacustrine" is a formal response to Auden's "Lakes". Auden looks at lake-folk with their chiefs and rhyming great-great-uncles. He won't rhyme as they used to, he's leaving that, he'll sing in another way though of course cognizant of the source, inseparable from it. Ashbery's uncle is Auden, and he's responding with "cities," with the sound of cities, with pieces of effects and causes that might seem to stray, even fight, wondering how they could be sitting side-by-side, this apartment and that studio, but still somehow cohere in one pulsing view.

If in Auden's view God is "invented," in Ashbery what we have is a "startled dream" and you'd have to get pressed back into it if you're going to make your own mountain of something.

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These two together reminds me of "Ozymandias":

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

Dali then, and his wonderful sand. No hope, maybe, but some regeneration is achieved in the constructs of the poet. The idea is derived from shambles. But I've yet to know of a civilization that was one idea. I imagine a main idea, a mythology, and then digressions and transgressions come from and go against and (sometimes) come back into it, reshaping it and the society it's supposed to have brought into being.

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Recalling Hobbes's Leviathan, the idea we need a state because we'd be at each other's throats without something like a government to keep us in line.

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Or, if a city, then a mountain of garbage? The poet is figured to be attuned to his culture and history, to chunks of it anyway (perhaps synced differently from others because of intense attention). And I'm thinking that yes, the last stanza in particular points in the direction of that poet building from the rubble. And of course, this solitary one:

But the past is already here, and you are nursing some private project.

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I'm taking Guest's lines for myself, putting them right beside "Lacustrine":

The siege made cloth a transfer

learned from invaders who craved it;

spindle thieves. 

She sang high notes and pebbles went into her 

work where it changed into marks; in that room

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Burning, until all that hate was transformed into useless love.

I'm grateful to have been returned to this poem, to find that I read some of it very differently. The "useless love" here, for example, seems to me something of high value. It's a way of re-figuring "unconditional love," where even one of the most basic conditions—usefulness of the love, of lover and beloved—has been discarded.

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Yes to your implication. Hate your friends, said Nietzsche. Healthy stuff. But here's another angle: love that doesn't bear children. I've been trying to play this reading out with the rest of the poem, but it unlocks something and turns the whole thing into a series of sexual positions. It's like there's a hidden slideshow, and it ends in tears.

If I'm to be a responsible academic and connect it with the rest of the readings, I'd say that habitations could be "forced" toward the path of citihood, the teepees crushed underhoof. Loathing, pillage, rape.

Celibacy's another angle. I think it was Leonard Shlain who said the middle ages was something of a eugenics disaster for Europe, attracting the best and the brightest to don habits and cassocks, most of these thinkers institutionally kept from the possibility of progeny.

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Then you are left with an idea of yourself
And the feeling of ascending emptiness of the afternoon
Which must be charged to the embarrassment of others
Who fly by you like beacons.

And "charged" makes another appearance, in something of a similar airy movement, but "charged" with (perhaps) a different sense. Sounds monetary, "charge this call to." The "I" here seems to be at rest, or in some state of stillness, while it's others that do movement, that transmit "like beacons". Others, and that distinct feeling in the second line, which perhaps would eventually lead to transcendence... but transcending toward... what? Something other than civilization?

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That's worth re-posting and seconding. Indeed a gift, and I'm glad the rules say she must keep on giving! Paraphrasing her remark, these lacustrine observations elevate my own. For instance, she turned us to the plurality in the title and how the poem somehow specifies, zeroing in on a certain You. I don't have anything to add to that, except that yes, it's really got me to thinking more about the scope of this poem, something I hadn't thought of even thinking about before. Here's a thought regarding that from Calvino's Invisible Cities, published some six years after Rivers:

And Polo answers, "Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents. Your atlas preserves the differences intact: that assortment of qualities which are like the letters in a name."

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It's this precisely. And my experience with Ashbery is that no matter how many times I read a poem of his (and what eloquent, keen, sometimes playful notions we bring from/to it), the poem remains an unpossessed place. And... odd, but I find this so reassuring.

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My mother used to starch handkerchiefs and shirt collars for my father. It makes for crisp fabric. It marks formality, serious business. There's something even more serious, it's from the urban dictionary, really makes that connection with desire, but it might not have been applicable back in 1963 or 66. There are others that relate to being intoxicated, knocked out, or drugged. I'm not sure about these though.

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Stepping back (but I think I'd still be along these trajectories) to test a couple of things:

Whose wind is desire starching a petal,
Whose disappointment broke into a rainbow of tears.

There's something oddly familiar about how this line was done, and if you saw the airport control tower in the second stanza, maybe you'll consider "starching a petal" as something akin to gilding the lily. In fact, if we go full Shakespeare (a nod to you), Salisbury will also reward us with the "rainbow":

Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp,
To guard a title that was rich before,
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

So John's dipping back into King John, those last three lines getting us "tapering, branches / Burning," and... let's just do the whole thing:

Controlled the sky, and with artifice dipped back
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,

Into the past for swans and tapering branches, / Burning
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light

until all that hate was transformed into useless love.
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

The cities are "doubling" the "pomp" of the lake, adding beauty to beauty only wastes it ("embalm" and "entomb" was, I think, inspired). This is the classic problem of art, of literature. Perhaps Ashbery is touching upon the limits of mimesis as the measure of the poem. Don't go sending it to the middle of the desert to record things for you. The poem now its own "private project" which is something "no climate can outsmart" because, maybe, it is its own climate, its own body of water.

Starch is the byproduct of plants. Pure starch is a product of people refining what they found in nature. "Gilding the lily" is extended by "starching a petal" because you return to the plant something that's been extracted from it, now in tampered (or refined) form, perhaps enhancing the plant, maybe clogging up its pores and stiffening it.

If desire starching a petal is in any way like gilding the lily, then maybe this is a development "useless love". Love's not only useless, it's become a method of negating use, of killing (by giving back more of the same in adulterated form), and thus could be judged "horrible" if not loathsome or hateful.

Itself, the city is a crime of passion.

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Two thoughts about this. First is Wilde's, 

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Which will end in—

Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

Perhaps you kill to preserve (the love, the beloved)... but is there any other way? If your answer is poetry, then maybe that poetry isn't potent enough.

The second comes from Noah. Those are tears of disappointment, the melancholy wrath of the Godhead (these lakes but remnants of that magnificent flood). It's an eternal agreement signed with rainbow flourish. This stops now, dear, I won't drown you again.

Aking kalahati ng maigsing palitan hinggil sa "Good for Nothing" ni Calvino

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—mahusay na napansin mo ang detalye! naituro ko na ito sa apat na large class, kasama itong sa atin, at wala pang nakababanggit ng tago ngunit mahalagang bagay na iyan kahit sa mga journal nila/ninyo. kung mas mahabang panahon sana ang nailaan ko sa pagturo nito, baka naitutok ko ang tanong sa identidad ng estranghero. (kung gayon, sino na siya sa palagay mo?)

salamat sa pagsabi nito sa akin. akala ko tapos na ang mga surpresa at magagandang balita mula sa inyong partikular na klase. ansaya ko naman sa mensahe mo.

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—malapit ka na. clue na ang kanyang pananamit. kung tama ako, halos nabanggit ang pangalan niya sa kuwento mismo!

grabe talaga nga ang 'pressure' na ito. hindi pa ba sapat ang mga 'kailangan' nating malaman at dapat pang aralin ang mga bagay na maiaasa naman sa iba?

at dahil sa usapan nating ito, parang gusto kong gawing 1st reading ito next year...

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Or, Berrigan and the Whale

3 Pages
by Ted Berrigan
for Jack Collom

DE— Let me just say that my heart skipped a beat when Berrigan's list mentioned the Hunt for the Whale. I read Melville in my youth when no teacher required it of me, and it was one of my greatest reading experiences. In fact, when the line struck me, the whole poem was suddenly flooded by the novel's immense waters. Even the title reminded me of Ahab's own 3 "pages," Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, petty officers and middlemen on this the grandest and most foolish of ventures.

AN— the first part of the novel is encyclopedic, a sort of melville's a dummies guide to whales, whaling, and the color white (that last part is my fave). formally, they're essays. if i remember right, there should be a good handful of lists in the pequod: what to do with blubber, what to do with whale parts (look up cassock!) and others, a lot of how-tos here and there. starbuck was the most practical of them, the least metaphysical, and he must be partial to these lists. of course ahab would dash them all and have it his way! he has his own list. and his methods of staking the ship to his own TO-DO, his theatrics, his mythic references, that sinister, inert doubloon!

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AN— schopenhauer sounds right in this case. perhaps not only in our reading of the poem but also in berrigan's writing of it.

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[A post was deleted]

DE— Ahab's mission, and this list of ten things to do. They're a whole universe apart in terms of grandeur and scope and yes time (and diction, as I think you're pointing out too). Though they're both America, that much is true. And maybe I'm forgetting (and you've reminded me) that the creation of this poem is itself the hunt for the whale.

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AN— it could be a key to this, i agree. one among many, i'm sure bec of the nature of the poem, but still, a welcome entrance!

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DE— The last lines after NO HELP WANTED doesn't seem like things you do every day. There's the heart attack, the medal of honor, the house in the country: these are things to aspire to, such that every day builds up to them. I guess in the back of the psyche there's something that gnaws, a less obvious, less acceptable desire, something more Quixotic (forgive the mixed references though I'm fairly certain Melville the sailor was likewise referencing Cervantes the sailor), therefore more grand than any desire. Still, there's that other thing. Ahab was all about revenge. Could this be the hidden motive (motif) of the poem? Berrigan's revenge on US conservatism (prosaic, sorry!), it's pretensions, how if it has any greatness in it, you'll find it solely in the shortcomings? For some deep yearning here is unanswered (WCW on the poem: for lack of which people die miserably every day). Which brings us back to the port of poem as whale as poem.

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AN— and maybe beyond the revenge of the poem is the vindictive life. like Berrigan was saying something like: I won't get with your program folks! my poker, my lunch poems these fly in the face of your congressional medal of honor!

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DE— Forgive the re-post here; I'd like the Mates in my ship as well. I tried to read Berrigan by using the 3 MATES of Ahab (as you suggested). There's something there, though not so clear-cut, but perhaps the others can make more of it.

Here it goes. Melville's Pequod is a ship of symbols (although it can be read as a driven narrative even without any eye for allegory, we thus have movies of it here and there) and as such is a very symmetrical construct. The 3 MATES can be read as the stages of the human brain: 1st mate STARBUCK is the voice of reason, the schooled one, a pragmatist at heart. 2nd mate STUBB is much less refined, but in moments of clarity he embodies a folk sort of wisdom. Nevertheless, he's more Gung-Ho and is thus more open to the seductions of Ahab. But 3rd mate Flask has practically sold his soul to Ahab even without him asking for it, and since it's clear we're moving down the brain here, Flask is more bile and vengeance; he really takes the whales personally.

Beer? Jack off? Curse? Probably Flask. hunker down, quite merrily, life goes by: We could probably get a whiff of Stubb's pipe here (though he seems to be smoking with Flask in the earlier parts too). Which means that the last, where happiness is not happiness but something negotiated with weather (sails?), that could be Starbuck there, the only dissenting voice when the ship went mad with Ahab's bloodlust. He's the one with his eye still on Mary, his wife, their "house in the country," their nameless son.

But all of their tempers and powers taken singly or together: NOT ENOUGH

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DE— Others in the forum say that it's part of the incompleteness, the "NOT ENOUGH"

Poem says that it's a list of 10, but it doesn't always add up (though it depends on who's counting), almost always amounting to but nine items. In the anthology, it physically takes 2 pages, though it says three. So 3 pages follows that logic. (An aside, Calvino's "Six Memos" contains only five, suggesting we write the last one, perhaps that's the case here too? Add your page. Or add your thing-to-do?)

The others cut the poem into three, following the sectioning suggested by those phrases with purely capitalized letters. What do you think? Perhaps there's an important 3-page document somewhere in American history we should know about?

Anyway, I'm glad to have to think on it/ of it. Hope this helps.

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DE— Hi! It's an idea I got from your 3 ages thread. I hope I didn't misquote you. But yes, put like that I see that it somehow not only "clusters" but "furthers" all the cutting that's already been done in/by the poem.

AN— a very good idea. the more you read it that way, the more the 3 "sets" or "pages" distinguish themselves from each other

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DE— True and tragic, how the persona "can't even find that wholeness in the lifestyle of other Americans." He lists everything that everyone else is about but comes out empty-handed. Even with fame and security thrown in at the last breath.

AN— perhaps because fame and security was offered in the list? maybe that made it worse somehow?

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DE— It's hard (for me) to put the whiteness of the whale out of the picture when inside North Am Lit, but because Berrigan does it in cuts he could evade full reference (as an epigram wouldn't, or a direct quote) and that sometimes makes for more richness, a more textured reading. Perhaps the "paging" I did with the mates was a stretch as well. But it was such fun doing it.

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AN— the openness of a cropped line is interesting. that's probably why I loved not only following Tzara's instructions but reading the works of people who did. and now that Berrigan gives us a project like this, it's wonderful to welcome all associations in the tapestry of meaning

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DE— Ishmael as the sailor behind (or grafted into) Berrigan's persona, that's promising. What a bummer to miss this, so: thanks! Ishmael's more laissez faire, a down and out man, going where the wind would take him. Melville must have been trying his damnedest to draw a blank of a character, someone who'd soak in the whole Pequod, all its men and methods then live to tell the tale. Ishmael is a survivor (the survivor) of the mad quest, and his presence could change the motif from revenge to just pure survival, openness, going at it one day at a time.

AN— she is on to something. Pip also is mad(dened) enough to deserve a second look as an intertext of this poem

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AN— hegemonic parameters of quality? are you saying they are the gold standard of poets of the time? and that they are oppressive somehow as influence goes? if i hear from you, thanks

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DE— I do love Berrigan too. He and Corman and Armantout, they're great "finds" for me, and only made possible by "This".

AN— perelman too now, and bernstein and hejinian

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DE— I saw this a bit late, here's the summary of some hypotheses offered earlier:

1) NOT ENOUGH. 3 Pages makes you look for a page that isn't there (the poem takes up only two in a book), the texts and contexts from which these lines have been cut. It highlights the insufficiency of the list, perhaps also of listing, maybe of poetry.

2) 3 SECTIONS. Some believe that lines such as "BY THE WATERS OF MANHATTAN" cut the poem physically into three.

3) That the title refers to 3 PAGES known only to Berrigan (and other such "hidden" readings).

AN— or there are (at least) 3 ways of looking at everything here. maybe read/ lunch/ poems are three pages more than enough!

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DE— Thanks!

Ligaw

Sa iyong palagay, hindi ko alam na binabasa mo ako. Ngunit mali ang iyong pagkakaunawa. Sa iyong buong akala, walang balat ang talata, walang antena ang pangungusap, at walang puso ang kataga. Basahin mo ako, aking lihim na mambabasa. Basahin mo habang ako mismo ay nagbabasa. Heto, halimbawa ang tula ni Lamberto E. Antonio, isang piyesang pwedeng-pwedeng pagsaluhan. Pinamagatang "Sa Kaarawan Ng Makata" itong handog ko sa iyo. Tanggapin mo sana, huwag mahiya. Hindi monopolyo ng makata ang kalinangan at kagandahan.

Gugutumin lang daw ako sa pagsulat;
Ngunit ang panulat itong aking buhay.
(Sa palad ay lubhang mailap ang pilak
Sapagkat sa dustang uri nabibilang).
Nabubuhay rin ako sa akala. Ang sabi nila: principio, conviction, o raison d'etre. Wika ko naman bilang salin o tugon: 'akala'. Ang akala ko, maililihim kita habambuhay, hanggang nakatago ako sa punyetang pungay ng mata ng mundo, nakalibing sa talukap ng daigdig. Patay na sana ako kung hindi lang kita kailangang itaboy. Ngunit buhay ka, nararamdaman ko ang iyong paglapit, nababasa ko mula sa iyong titig at ngiti. Aatras ako ha? Hindi ito basta hiya pero kailangan kong payukod na tumalikod upang iwasan ang lalim ng mga mata mo.

Mahigit dalawang dekada sa mundo:
Mga taong saklot ako ng pighati,
Pangarap, pag-asa, lugod at silakbo
Na naitutulang nagdurugong ngiti.
Hihilingin ko sanang iwasan mo naman ang talim ng aking mata. Kaya kong patagusin ito, maniwala ka. Hihiling sana ako, paluhod kung kailangan! Ngunit hindi ako tungkol sa mga hiling; hinggil ako sa mga akala. Maligayang bati ng isang malayong makata, halimbawa, ang binabasa habang ako mismo ay narito, nalulunod sa mapanganib na tunog ng 'ano kaya?' at lagi kang pinapangarap. Ikaw naman, hinihiling mong buuin ko ang iyong ngalan. Kulang pa bang isukat kita sa isang palayaw? Hindi mo ba mahinuha sa isang pantig ang pintig ng salita, wasiwas ng pangungusap, at pawis ng talata? Gusto mo sigurong malaman kung ano ka sa akin. Alamin mo! Gusto mo sigurong marinig ang tamis ng iyong pangalan mula sa aking bibig. Pakinggan mo! Hindi mo ba kayang tikman mula sa piging ng aking katahimikan ang walang hanggang lasa ng iyong pangalan?

Nagdaan sa aking buhay ang umasa
Laban sa pag-asa, pagkat ang damdamin
At diwa'y may sapot ng pangungulila
Na hindi maugat ang huklubang dahil;

Limit kong ituring na isang tadhana
Ang karalitaa't panagimpang bigo:
Ang buhay ko't lahat ng buhay sa lupa,
Itinakdang maging hungkang at baligho;

Ngunit nakita kong may libong kawangis
Ang danas kong hindi sinlubha't sintindi
Ng danas ng ibang kahit tumatangis,
May pag-asang muli't muling nagsisindi.
Kung hindi mo lang ikahihiya, ipagsisigawan ko ang iyong pangalan. At bakit hindi? Sinabi ko sa iyo, nuong naramdaman kong ika'y nakikinig, na may dalawang paraan naipapahiwatig ang pag-ibig: pasigaw o pabulong. Sa iyo ko rin sinabi na may dalawang uri ang kawalang hanggang isinasaprosa nina Borges at Calvino: ang disyerto na di masusukat ng tuwid na linya ni Euclid at ang labirintong kumikiwal-kiwal ayon sa kurbadong komputasyon ni Riemann. Paano ko pipigilang ibunton sa kubling hinga ang iyong pangalan gayong duon ko lamang naintindihan sa iyong presensya na hindi ako ang sentro ng aking labirinto? Ayon sa sipi ni Pascal, walang sirkumperensya at lahat ay sentro. Alam mo bang ikaw itong tinatawag na 'lahat'? Ngunit mas mahalaga ang iyong kahihiyan kaysa anumang pipitsuging pag-ibig.

Paano pa nga ba maisisiwalat
Ng isang makata ang katotohanan
Sa gutom ng laksang kauring mahirap
Kung ang panulat ko'y aking bibitiwan?
Akala mo hindi kita kilala. Sa iyong buo at mahusay na pagpapalagay, walang kinalaman ang aking tibok sa iyong titig. Marahil tama ka at dapat kitang batiin. Pwedeng mali ka, kilala pala kita at magkaniig ang iyong mata at aking tinig. Kung gayon, kailangan kitang batiin sa tagumpay ng iyong di sadyang pananalakay. Ngunit, aking lihim na mambabasa, lumayo ka sapagkat hindi kita nais makitang nalulunod. Isusumpa kita kung may kapangyarihan ang aking pantig; babasbasan kita kung sagrado ang aking laway. Pero, sapat na sanang usalin ko ang iyong palayaw bilang panuldok sa aking payo. Pakiusap! Sapagkat sa totoo lang, wala akong sapat na alam o akala sa lalim ng aking nararamdaman.