About Stein’s ‘Celery’
Before, her ‘Single Fish’
Black ants carrying
Degenerative
How Stein’s ‘Way Lay Vegetable’
Line Dry
Lit, pero hindi rural o for the arts
Pictorial sa never ending
Sa kaloob na estilo ng madla
Seizure of pedestrians
Velocity
Ipinapakita ang mga post na may etiketa na stein. Ipakita ang lahat ng mga post
Ipinapakita ang mga post na may etiketa na stein. Ipakita ang lahat ng mga post
Nob 29, 2020
11 tula
Hun 10, 2016
Notes on Gertrude Stein’s “Veal”
Very well very well, washing is old, washing is washing.
Cold soup, cold soup clear and particular and a principal a principal question to put into.
[ bartleby ]
K—
D— washing is old,
Veal is the meat of the young, more expensive and tender. Washing could be that key and ancient practice of cleaning your meat before cooking. Something that could be taken for granted very easily. It could be a psychic or spiritual (even ritual) cleansing, as this is a sacrifice of calf or lamb for the sake of taste. Not necessity.
K—
D— I remember a discussion on kosher in one of the Stein threads. Veal must be something of a controversy in that regard.
K—
D—Yes, technically veal is kosher so long as it’s from official animals and cut in the proper method. Hence the controversy. Some rabbis would like us to look at the principles, and from that there’s a lot going into the conditions in which the animals are kept and raised, how it’s translated from farm to table:
There’s more, but I don’t know, maybe this is a very small minority:
Still, it’s worth noting that scriptural ethics is at odds with other moral systems and this leads to an internal crisis:
It’s been justified from the very beginning. And this old white-washing, it’s still at it.
Cold soup, cold soup clear and particular and a principal a principal question to put into.
Could that coldness be a judgment? That these producers (and consumers?) of veal are cold-blooded. They follow a divine code and yet there’s this "clear" outrageous practice that the code condones. And the existence of such "little" issues puts into question the universality and goodness of the rules.
For me, it’s not about moral qualms on the part of Stein. Just because someone drinks coke doesn’t mean this guy’s not mindful of how the multinational corporation runs down local economies and ruins teeth the world over. I think that Stein’s sensing hypocrisy and would like to enter that into what veal is supposed to mean. As in celery, she tries to restore the history of the food as part of the food, as something we consume without knowing we consume it, that we are continuing and absorbing ages-old ideas (slavery, elitism, all manners of prejudice) just by cooking and eating something.
K—
T—
K—
D— Very well very well, washing is old, washing is washing.
I’d look into the youngest of the crew, Pip. He jumps out of the boat twice, washed, so to speak. “Very well very well” seems to lead to a revision (or greater specification) of plans once new factors are identified. It might also lead to compromise. A whale is loosed to save Pip, and no one’s too happy about it.
Cold soup, cold soup clear and particular and a principal a principal question to put into.
No one, that is, except maybe for Captain Ahab. The next time Pip jumps in the water he is stranded there or a long time, in that “awful lonesomeness” (cold soup, cold soup). Captain Ahab looks at Pip as if he is some compass into fate, or to the real (clear) nature of things. I vaguely remember a chapter where Ahab takes Pip aside and confers with him beyond earshot of other sailors but within view. I think he took Pip out on a small boat? Anyway, if so, this is where that principal question was entered.
K—
T—
K—
M—
K—
M—
T—
D— There are tales and practices where important structures like bridges and large bells would be cursed, would prove dangerous if the builders neglect to pour baby or virgin blood.
The Judeo-Christian tradition is littered with the remains of the young and the innocent. Abel, the son of Abraham (almost, and it was a close call), the firstborn children behind the unmarked Egyptian doors, and Herod’s infanticide. It’s usually done to curtail power (as in those offered to the Minotaur in Greek mythology), keep it on one side or the other, the adults refusing to pass it on to successors or soon-to-be-upstarts. Now if Jesus is God’s lamb, then it might be Pilate doing the washing:
Very well very well, washing is old, washing is washing.
It’s that “very well very well” that puzzles me, though your “well” as noun is fascinating. Tears welling up? It does sound as if the word “veal” was butterflied and unfolded.
clear and particular and a principal a principal question to put into.
In Moby-Dick, what comes closest to all this is Pip. Ahab’s that principal (they belong in the cabin, thanks, K—, I misplaced them earlier) and his quest and question in the heart of the hunt as well as the book. I remember encountering “principal” in Stein’s office once before. It seems to come into this too... and some schoolgirl or schoolboy is about to get it.
K—
T—
K—
Cold soup, cold soup clear and particular and a principal a principal question to put into.
*
[ bartleby ]
*
K—
D— washing is old,
Veal is the meat of the young, more expensive and tender. Washing could be that key and ancient practice of cleaning your meat before cooking. Something that could be taken for granted very easily. It could be a psychic or spiritual (even ritual) cleansing, as this is a sacrifice of calf or lamb for the sake of taste. Not necessity.
K—
D— I remember a discussion on kosher in one of the Stein threads. Veal must be something of a controversy in that regard.
K—
D—Yes, technically veal is kosher so long as it’s from official animals and cut in the proper method. Hence the controversy. Some rabbis would like us to look at the principles, and from that there’s a lot going into the conditions in which the animals are kept and raised, how it’s translated from farm to table:
The idea of linking kosher food with other ethical issues is not new. In the 1970s, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein of New York urged Jews not to eat veal. In the late 1980s, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, a leader of the Jewish Renewal movement, wrote that Jews should examine all the resources they consume, not just food, to determine if they were “kosher” in the broadest sense of the word.
There’s more, but I don’t know, maybe this is a very small minority:
Clearly Rabbi Levy was implying that some, I emphasize some and not all, Reform Jews might wish to refrain from eating the foods that are cited as forbidden in our Torah portion. He also seemed to suggest that some Reform Jews might wish to express their social consciousness by not eating veal that comes from calves that were raised in a cruel manner or crops that are cultivated and harvested with the use of pesticides, which are dangerous to farm workers. Rabbi Levy was seeking to explore a range of possibilities for Reform observance, some hearkening back to ancient tradition and some quite modern in spirit.
Still, it’s worth noting that scriptural ethics is at odds with other moral systems and this leads to an internal crisis:
If these unethical violations seem too anomalous an occurrence to judge the entirety of kashrut on, though, consider the fact that within the system itself there abound examples of unethical practices. For example, veal is a common kosher dish served on Jewish dinner tables across the country, but its production is anything but humane. According to the American Humane Society, hundreds of thousands of calves raised for veal are confined in cages so compact that they cannot move their bodies for their entire sixteen-week lives. While this is the case for both kosher and non-kosher veal production, if there is no distinction between the ways in which kosher and non-kosher factory farms raise veal, what other factors distinguish kosher veal from non-kosher veal? In what sense is it more moral to eat kosher veal?Very well very well, washing is old, washing is washing.
It’s been justified from the very beginning. And this old white-washing, it’s still at it.
Cold soup, cold soup clear and particular and a principal a principal question to put into.
Could that coldness be a judgment? That these producers (and consumers?) of veal are cold-blooded. They follow a divine code and yet there’s this "clear" outrageous practice that the code condones. And the existence of such "little" issues puts into question the universality and goodness of the rules.
For me, it’s not about moral qualms on the part of Stein. Just because someone drinks coke doesn’t mean this guy’s not mindful of how the multinational corporation runs down local economies and ruins teeth the world over. I think that Stein’s sensing hypocrisy and would like to enter that into what veal is supposed to mean. As in celery, she tries to restore the history of the food as part of the food, as something we consume without knowing we consume it, that we are continuing and absorbing ages-old ideas (slavery, elitism, all manners of prejudice) just by cooking and eating something.
K—
T—
K—
D— Very well very well, washing is old, washing is washing.
I’d look into the youngest of the crew, Pip. He jumps out of the boat twice, washed, so to speak. “Very well very well” seems to lead to a revision (or greater specification) of plans once new factors are identified. It might also lead to compromise. A whale is loosed to save Pip, and no one’s too happy about it.
Cold soup, cold soup clear and particular and a principal a principal question to put into.
No one, that is, except maybe for Captain Ahab. The next time Pip jumps in the water he is stranded there or a long time, in that “awful lonesomeness” (cold soup, cold soup). Captain Ahab looks at Pip as if he is some compass into fate, or to the real (clear) nature of things. I vaguely remember a chapter where Ahab takes Pip aside and confers with him beyond earshot of other sailors but within view. I think he took Pip out on a small boat? Anyway, if so, this is where that principal question was entered.
K—
T—
K—
M—
K—
M—
T—
D— There are tales and practices where important structures like bridges and large bells would be cursed, would prove dangerous if the builders neglect to pour baby or virgin blood.
The Judeo-Christian tradition is littered with the remains of the young and the innocent. Abel, the son of Abraham (almost, and it was a close call), the firstborn children behind the unmarked Egyptian doors, and Herod’s infanticide. It’s usually done to curtail power (as in those offered to the Minotaur in Greek mythology), keep it on one side or the other, the adults refusing to pass it on to successors or soon-to-be-upstarts. Now if Jesus is God’s lamb, then it might be Pilate doing the washing:
Very well very well, washing is old, washing is washing.
It’s that “very well very well” that puzzles me, though your “well” as noun is fascinating. Tears welling up? It does sound as if the word “veal” was butterflied and unfolded.
clear and particular and a principal a principal question to put into.
In Moby-Dick, what comes closest to all this is Pip. Ahab’s that principal (they belong in the cabin, thanks, K—, I misplaced them earlier) and his quest and question in the heart of the hunt as well as the book. I remember encountering “principal” in Stein’s office once before. It seems to come into this too... and some schoolgirl or schoolboy is about to get it.
K—
T—
K—
Notes on Gertrude Stein’s “Celery”
Celery tastes tastes where in curled lashes and little bits and mostly in remains.
A green acre is so selfish and so pure and so enlivened.
[ bartleby ]
K—
M—
K—
M—
D— Celery tastes tastes where in curled lashes and little bits and mostly in remains.
Those lashes could be curling as in the act of whipping. Perhaps this acre is not as pure as it feels in the mouth. So “lashes” are soft “on the eyes,” but those s-sounds from kind of seethe, for example: ending as they do in those fertile “remains”.
A green acre is so selfish and so pure and so enlivened.
What a redundancy of life in this one, and selfish of course stands out. This green comes at the cost of those remains, conceivably buried in the soil beneath.
K—
M—
K—
M—
K—
D— Something sounds quite technical now that you’ve highlighted it. If legal, perhaps pointing to an institutionalized injustice? As for “tastes tastes,” one of them could be a verb, and if grammatical, it should be the first. The celery is the one doing the tasting, eating of those lost, nameless bits, those buried remains. If these nameless had “tastes,” these would not now be distinct from the vegetable’s taste. And now the agency, the spirit, the subjectivity belongs to the celery.
K—
T—
M—
K—
M—
K—
M—
K—
T—
K—
T—
K—
T—
K—
T—
K—
M—
K—
M—
D— Odysseus also found herbs. And following Heracles and his (pre)Spartan boys, I came upon a wreath of celery. So pure! So enlivened! And maybe something that might account for the remains:
T—
D— Never thought of linking them that way, T—, one leading to the other. I’ve always somehow seen these subpoems as independent, linked in terms of theme and image. But yes, if they are courses in a meal...
T—
K—
T—
M—
T—
K—
M—
T—
K—
M—
K—
D— And lashes... Pip was to be led (then tied) by Ahab with “man-rope”
A green acre is so selfish and so pure and so enlivened.
*
[ bartleby ]
*
K—
M—
K—
M—
D— Celery tastes tastes where in curled lashes and little bits and mostly in remains.
Those lashes could be curling as in the act of whipping. Perhaps this acre is not as pure as it feels in the mouth. So “lashes” are soft “on the eyes,” but those s-sounds from kind of seethe, for example: ending as they do in those fertile “remains”.
A green acre is so selfish and so pure and so enlivened.
What a redundancy of life in this one, and selfish of course stands out. This green comes at the cost of those remains, conceivably buried in the soil beneath.
K—
M—
K—
M—
K—
D— Something sounds quite technical now that you’ve highlighted it. If legal, perhaps pointing to an institutionalized injustice? As for “tastes tastes,” one of them could be a verb, and if grammatical, it should be the first. The celery is the one doing the tasting, eating of those lost, nameless bits, those buried remains. If these nameless had “tastes,” these would not now be distinct from the vegetable’s taste. And now the agency, the spirit, the subjectivity belongs to the celery.
K—
T—
M—
K—
M—
K—
M—
K—
T—
K—
T—
K—
T—
K—
T—
K—
M—
K—
M—
D— Odysseus also found herbs. And following Heracles and his (pre)Spartan boys, I came upon a wreath of celery. So pure! So enlivened! And maybe something that might account for the remains:
While she showed to the heroes the way to the nearest well, she left the child behind lying in a meadow, which during her absence was killed by a dragon. When the Seven on their return saw the accident, they slew the dragon and instituted funeral games to be held every third year.
T—
D— Never thought of linking them that way, T—, one leading to the other. I’ve always somehow seen these subpoems as independent, linked in terms of theme and image. But yes, if they are courses in a meal...
T—
K—
T—
M—
T—
K—
M—
T—
K—
M—
K—
D— And lashes... Pip was to be led (then tied) by Ahab with “man-rope”
Notes on Gertrude Stein’s “Way Lay Vegetable”
Leaves in grass and mow potatoes, have a skin, hurry you up flutter.
Suppose it is ex a cake suppose it is new mercy and leave charlotte and nervous bed rows. Suppose it is meal. Suppose it is sam.
K—
D— “Way Lay” might point to an ambush. Are those veggies out to get us? Or we, them? “Nervous bed rows” makes me think of how we call paralyzed people vegetables, how falling down from normal human functions also means descent along Jacob’s ladder.
K—
T—
D— But Stein, she did go on. It’s remarkable. Like how some poets go on and on about spirit and noble ideals, but before anything else, why don’t we touch upon the basics? Food, which is our fundamental interaction with nature and with each other. Language as well, how we language food, our relationships.
K—
T—
K—
T—
K—
M—
Suppose it is ex a cake suppose it is new mercy and leave charlotte and nervous bed rows. Suppose it is meal. Suppose it is sam.
K—
D— “Way Lay” might point to an ambush. Are those veggies out to get us? Or we, them? “Nervous bed rows” makes me think of how we call paralyzed people vegetables, how falling down from normal human functions also means descent along Jacob’s ladder.
K—
T—
D— But Stein, she did go on. It’s remarkable. Like how some poets go on and on about spirit and noble ideals, but before anything else, why don’t we touch upon the basics? Food, which is our fundamental interaction with nature and with each other. Language as well, how we language food, our relationships.
K—
T—
K—
T—
K—
M—
May 22, 2016
10th line of “Here Everything is Still Floating”
Occupying liminal spaces among the motifs here: the steps, the shower, maybe the bar too, and the asylum (or the mind of the person committed).
Ashbery came to write “Lining of fabricating living from the instantaneous” then found it beyond revision.
What a decisive turn from “making a living”. Could it be that “lining” produces a threshold, as in to draw a line in the sand? Except it seems as intimate as a seam or piping in the cloth, effectively keeping a body from another body. As in Genesis.
An anti-intimacy.
If we take “lining” as a verb, then the line reflexively calls out poetry for all its attempts to make a unified sense from individual moments. This could be seen as a central duty of literature, to bring order to chaos, a preparation of the world for human agency. As in dressing up. As in buttons, before Stein saw to them.
Then come and consider this a violation, the moments plucked from their own magic and woven into “a life”, a “history”, brought in service of a whole. The whole we find either unaware or in denial of its own arbitrariness, its fabrication.
*
Ashbery came to write “Lining of fabricating living from the instantaneous” then found it beyond revision.
*
What a decisive turn from “making a living”. Could it be that “lining” produces a threshold, as in to draw a line in the sand? Except it seems as intimate as a seam or piping in the cloth, effectively keeping a body from another body. As in Genesis.
An anti-intimacy.
*
If we take “lining” as a verb, then the line reflexively calls out poetry for all its attempts to make a unified sense from individual moments. This could be seen as a central duty of literature, to bring order to chaos, a preparation of the world for human agency. As in dressing up. As in buttons, before Stein saw to them.
Then come and consider this a violation, the moments plucked from their own magic and woven into “a life”, a “history”, brought in service of a whole. The whole we find either unaware or in denial of its own arbitrariness, its fabrication.
Set 11, 2015
Notes on Gertrude Stein’s “Mutton,” Stanzas 1-6
A letter which can wither, a learning which can suffer and an outrage which is simultaneous is principal.
Student, students are merciful and recognised they chew something.
Hate rests that is solid and sparse and all in a shape and largely very largely. Interleaved and successive and a sample of smell all this makes a certainty a shade.
Light curls very light curls have no more curliness than soup. This is not a subject.
Change a single stream of denting and change it hurriedly, what does it express, it expresses nausea. Like a very strange likeness and pink, like that and not more like that than the same resemblance and not more like that than no middle space in cutting.
An eye glass, what is an eye glass, it is water. A splendid specimen, what is it when it is little and tender so that there are parts. A centre can place and four are no more and two and two are not middle.
—
Students figure in this discourse because they are... lambs? Sheep are saturated symbols (Bible, idiomatic expressions), and maybe the idea is to cut into it, find something new through the trademark multiperspectival Steinian take.
Light curls very light curls have no more curliness than soup. This is not a subject.
The line could refer to the coat of the living sheep, the smoke of the soup, perhaps the baby curls on very young, impressionable kids. I'm thinking of light too, in the curvature of time-space the subject matter of Einstein.
Or light, perhaps, meaning perspectival lines? Perhaps she is cuing us (again, anew) how best to read her work, another, more intricate way of putting slant-of-light or angle or (much more contemporary) spin.
The last sentence is nice, approachable and forbidding all at once. Does it mean that we should not take her words academically? That she has some aversion to that? Or could she mean that light is to be seen as (or also as) adjective.
Or is "This" itself not a subject, esp a this that is itself, not taken to refer to anything except its placement?
—
"May" quite possibly, given what Peter says below about the "Mutton quad" (also Mutton = May + Button?). I've been looking at the letter M as well, how it places well with the line:
A centre can place and four are no more and two and two are not middle.
—
I wonder if M is (also) the letter that can wither, as W could be its image if it withers (and vice versa). Seeing letters reflected in water now (or dissolving to it, or become liquid Dali-style), thanks to you.
—
Student, students are merciful and recognised they chew something.
Hate rests that is solid and sparse and all in a shape and largely very largely. Interleaved and successive and a sample of smell all this makes a certainty a shade.
Light curls very light curls have no more curliness than soup. This is not a subject.
Change a single stream of denting and change it hurriedly, what does it express, it expresses nausea. Like a very strange likeness and pink, like that and not more like that than the same resemblance and not more like that than no middle space in cutting.
An eye glass, what is an eye glass, it is water. A splendid specimen, what is it when it is little and tender so that there are parts. A centre can place and four are no more and two and two are not middle.
*
—
Students figure in this discourse because they are... lambs? Sheep are saturated symbols (Bible, idiomatic expressions), and maybe the idea is to cut into it, find something new through the trademark multiperspectival Steinian take.
Light curls very light curls have no more curliness than soup. This is not a subject.
The line could refer to the coat of the living sheep, the smoke of the soup, perhaps the baby curls on very young, impressionable kids. I'm thinking of light too, in the curvature of time-space the subject matter of Einstein.
Or light, perhaps, meaning perspectival lines? Perhaps she is cuing us (again, anew) how best to read her work, another, more intricate way of putting slant-of-light or angle or (much more contemporary) spin.
The last sentence is nice, approachable and forbidding all at once. Does it mean that we should not take her words academically? That she has some aversion to that? Or could she mean that light is to be seen as (or also as) adjective.
Or is "This" itself not a subject, esp a this that is itself, not taken to refer to anything except its placement?
—
"May" quite possibly, given what Peter says below about the "Mutton quad" (also Mutton = May + Button?). I've been looking at the letter M as well, how it places well with the line:
A centre can place and four are no more and two and two are not middle.
—
I wonder if M is (also) the letter that can wither, as W could be its image if it withers (and vice versa). Seeing letters reflected in water now (or dissolving to it, or become liquid Dali-style), thanks to you.
—
Here's the basic mutton info, if needed.
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I think stanza 1 and the middle part of stanza 3 agrees with you. Stanza 5 very strongly:
Change a single stream of denting and change it hurriedly, what does it express, it expresses nausea (space, blankness?)... and not more like that than no middle space in cutting.
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Student, students are merciful and recognised they chew something.
For some reason I have in mind bored students who would rather be passive than participate. Their physical (maybe also mental) activity goes to the chewing of gum, how to do it without teacher noticing (or off to the principal's office with you! Gum is not the subject.)
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Pupils! Wow, of course! Here's some dilation for you...
—
And this eye + your post brings to mind such readings as this that we're doing. It's like Stein's looking at how closely she's writing this, how closely we'll (have to) look. And she's telegraphing from her desk to ours: "here's looking at you, kids!"
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Pupils! Wow, of course! Here's some dilation for you...
—
And this eye + your post brings to mind such readings as this that we're doing. It's like Stein's looking at how closely she's writing this, how closely we'll (have to) look. And she's telegraphing from her desk to ours: "here's looking at you, kids!"
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Set 10, 2015
Notes on Gertrude Stein’s “Roastbeef,” Stanzas 22-37
Claiming nothing, not claiming anything, not a claim in everything, collecting claiming, all this makes a harmony, it even makes a succession.
Sincerely gracious one morning, sincerely graciously trembling, sincere in gracious eloping, all this makes a furnace and a blanket. All this shows quantity.
Like an eye, not so much more, not any searching, no compliments.
Please be the beef, please beef, pleasure is not wailing. Please beef, please be carved clear, please be a case of consideration.
Search a neglect. A sale, any greatness is a stall and there is no memory, there is no clear collection.
A satin sight, what is a trick, no trick is mountainous and the color, all the rush is in the blood.
Bargaining for a little, bargain for a touch, a liberty, an estrangement, a characteristic turkey.
Please spice, please no name, place a whole weight, sink into a standard rising, raise a circle, choose a right around, make the resonance accounted and gather green any collar.
To bury a slender chicken, to raise an old feather, to surround a garland and to bake a pole splinter, to suggest a repose and to settle simply, to surrender one another, to succeed saving simpler, to satisfy a singularity and not to be blinder, to sugar nothing darker and to read redder, to have the color better, to sort out dinner, to remain together, to surprise no sinner, to curve nothing sweeter, to continue thinner, to increase in resting recreation to design string not dimmer.
Cloudiness what is cloudiness, is it a lining, is it a roll, is it melting.
The sooner there is jerking, the sooner freshness is tender, the sooner the round it is not round the sooner it is withdrawn in cutting, the sooner the measure means service, the sooner there is chinking, the sooner there is sadder than salad, the sooner there is none do her, the sooner there is no choice, the sooner there is a gloom freer, the same sooner and more sooner, this is no error in hurry and in pressure and in opposition to consideration.
A recital, what is a recital, it is an organ and use does not strengthen valor, it soothes medicine.
A transfer, a large transfer, a little transfer, some transfer, clouds and tracks do transfer, a transfer is not neglected.
Pride, when is there perfect pretence, there is no more than yesterday and ordinary.
A sentence of a vagueness that is violence is authority and a mission and stumbling and also certainly also a prison. Calmness, calm is beside the plate and in way in. There is no turn in terror. There is no volume in sound.
There is coagulation in cold and there is none in prudence. Something is preserved and the evening is long and the colder spring has sudden shadows in a sun. All the stain is tender and lilacs really lilacs are disturbed. Why is the perfect reestablishment practiced and prized, why is it composed. The result the pure result is juice and size and baking and exhibition and nonchalance and sacrifice and volume and a section in division and the surrounding recognition and horticulture and no murmur. This is a result. There is no superposition and circumstance, there is hardness and a reason and the rest and remainder. There is no delight and no mathematics.
—
The sound of collard greens at 29, "gather green any collar": might this be gathering people of any stripe? Or, both the blue- and the white-collared workers. As if everyone is invited to the same table for the same meal.
—
And thanks for organizing us!
—
Search a neglect. A sale, any greatness is a stall and there is no memory, there is no clear collection.
"Search a neglect" sounds like fault-finding, and that process spills over to the market place. Where one finds food, I suppose. And greatness... where one finds ideas? From the quotidian and the "neglected" details of everyday life, maybe.
"Collection" has been repeated, and here, working as it does with "memory" and "clear" seems to suggest the word "recollection". But this is the first instance, where memory is being made.
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Thanks for this link, and wow, congrats on that New Year's Day publication.
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"Claims" are also verbal, poetic acts. That sense could be at play here too, how this production of sound and play not merely a process of cooking but also consumption. Maybe in the sense that the performance at the dining table (conversation, eating) forecasts the events of the bed.
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Bargaining for a little, bargain for a touch, a liberty, an estrangement, a characteristic turkey.
The "characteristic turkey" (just the sound of that!) follows "an estrangement" which seem to me also a formal estrangement, the cadence and feel (and type) of the first four suddenly thrown off by her pièce de résistance.
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I don't think the reference to genitalia is at all out of place, and I'm glad you brought it up. And it's "characteristic": so maybe the male presence was perceived as an inevitable, tolerable intrusion or something of a threat in the space between Stein and her lover.
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So maybe it's beef vs turkey (at some point), about which of the plates will take the table, and that it could also be a question of identity if not politics (and maybe economics, as it "bargains for a touch").
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Looking also at a, b, c, d, definitions, as I feel that the words "sinking" and "rise" put so close to "standard" tends toward that image of a flag maybe in the context of a conquest, a contest, a demarcation of territory.
Please be the beef, please beef, pleasure is not wailing.
Hm. Hysterics does not a poem make? Is this a call for substance? But if we're looking at the processing of food, wailing would happen maybe as animal becomes beef. Or if the cook or butcher is injured in some way? Could it also occur while consuming, eating? Or afterwards?
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I only had a vague idea of what kosher is, much less how it's done. This connection is indeed fertile: the idea of "pleasing" the beef is there, of somehow easing the living animal into the state of death, preparing it (and ritual participants too, I think) for food and what it means, what it means to take something like this on the table, into the self.
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Cloudiness what is cloudiness, is it a lining, is it a roll, is it melting.
Stanza 31 plays with several things at once. There's the silver lining and the rolling of thunder among others. Melting... could that be rain? Such a painterly way of putting it.
It's all of a single line (lining?), perhaps a lesson on evocation, that you need only see (lining), hear (roll), and feel (melting) certain select details to account for the whole sky. It begins and returns to taste: the cloudiness of the gravy or soup maybe, the roll on the side, the butter.
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Lunch time here so I can imagine some sort of lining with pastries and cakes. Maybe the side dishes "line" the entree, or the dishes are lined-up, or it's yes silver, a literal lining along the edges of the plate.
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Dirty silverware? On to 33...
A recital, what is a recital, it is an organ and use does not strengthen valor, it soothes medicine.
I imagine someone playing music at meal time, Christmas or New Year. That curious ending sounds to me like "preaching to the choir," or how artists (or those with an artistic temperament or tendency) are the only ones to ever "get" other artists.
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I've been reading some Barthelme, and his view of Stein (alongside Joyce) sounded perfect: that she is party to making an object out of literature, that is not about something but a thing-in-itself "like a rock or a refrigerator." The recital and organ do not merely accompany each other, they are same, solid, able to produce music. And this music, her music, it does not serve catharsis is the old Greek sense, but by reviving the language itself, by soothing the "medicine."
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The word "increase" here and the context of your discussion makes me think that they're trying for a relationship were both individuals are freed rather than restricted, the "string" thus being redesigned for their intents. As for 34...
A transfer, a large transfer, a little transfer, some transfer, clouds and tracks do transfer, a transfer is not neglected.
In terms of food, clouds seem to me steam, also the dimming of the clear liquid as it becomes broth. Heat transfer has ever defined the process of cooking, a central consideration when living off the land. Tracks are more difficult in this level. But if I'm following the Karren's reading of the pioneer-in-Stein, then there's the possibility of seeing a dynamic process (collecting firewood, butchering, going to the market) making possible a couple of hours of cooking, standing in more or less the same spot and just cooking. All those errands are in that pot. And later, in the stomach.
Unburdening? An emotional, physical connection? These are here.
Conversation too. And the poem itself as a transfer, even the misreadings, all of that is communicated, assimilated (even if only a little), proven indelible.
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That would be a great connection to make, and I'd love to think that... whether it's there or not. I'm trying to remember Macbeth, him trying to squeeze some clarity from the witches. I'm seeing Stein's 'cloudiness' as important, vital, even if the brew (and the words) of the witches were necessarily 'cloudy'. Macbeth would project his longings into the words, seeing what he wanted to see and establishing a set of plans upon that vision. If Stein is making spells for us here, it seems the acceptable reader-position is that of the Thane of Glamis.
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Sincerely gracious one morning, sincerely graciously trembling, sincere in gracious eloping, all this makes a furnace and a blanket. All this shows quantity.
Like an eye, not so much more, not any searching, no compliments.
Please be the beef, please beef, pleasure is not wailing. Please beef, please be carved clear, please be a case of consideration.
Search a neglect. A sale, any greatness is a stall and there is no memory, there is no clear collection.
A satin sight, what is a trick, no trick is mountainous and the color, all the rush is in the blood.
Bargaining for a little, bargain for a touch, a liberty, an estrangement, a characteristic turkey.
Please spice, please no name, place a whole weight, sink into a standard rising, raise a circle, choose a right around, make the resonance accounted and gather green any collar.
To bury a slender chicken, to raise an old feather, to surround a garland and to bake a pole splinter, to suggest a repose and to settle simply, to surrender one another, to succeed saving simpler, to satisfy a singularity and not to be blinder, to sugar nothing darker and to read redder, to have the color better, to sort out dinner, to remain together, to surprise no sinner, to curve nothing sweeter, to continue thinner, to increase in resting recreation to design string not dimmer.
Cloudiness what is cloudiness, is it a lining, is it a roll, is it melting.
The sooner there is jerking, the sooner freshness is tender, the sooner the round it is not round the sooner it is withdrawn in cutting, the sooner the measure means service, the sooner there is chinking, the sooner there is sadder than salad, the sooner there is none do her, the sooner there is no choice, the sooner there is a gloom freer, the same sooner and more sooner, this is no error in hurry and in pressure and in opposition to consideration.
A recital, what is a recital, it is an organ and use does not strengthen valor, it soothes medicine.
A transfer, a large transfer, a little transfer, some transfer, clouds and tracks do transfer, a transfer is not neglected.
Pride, when is there perfect pretence, there is no more than yesterday and ordinary.
A sentence of a vagueness that is violence is authority and a mission and stumbling and also certainly also a prison. Calmness, calm is beside the plate and in way in. There is no turn in terror. There is no volume in sound.
There is coagulation in cold and there is none in prudence. Something is preserved and the evening is long and the colder spring has sudden shadows in a sun. All the stain is tender and lilacs really lilacs are disturbed. Why is the perfect reestablishment practiced and prized, why is it composed. The result the pure result is juice and size and baking and exhibition and nonchalance and sacrifice and volume and a section in division and the surrounding recognition and horticulture and no murmur. This is a result. There is no superposition and circumstance, there is hardness and a reason and the rest and remainder. There is no delight and no mathematics.
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The sound of collard greens at 29, "gather green any collar": might this be gathering people of any stripe? Or, both the blue- and the white-collared workers. As if everyone is invited to the same table for the same meal.
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And thanks for organizing us!
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Search a neglect. A sale, any greatness is a stall and there is no memory, there is no clear collection.
"Search a neglect" sounds like fault-finding, and that process spills over to the market place. Where one finds food, I suppose. And greatness... where one finds ideas? From the quotidian and the "neglected" details of everyday life, maybe.
"Collection" has been repeated, and here, working as it does with "memory" and "clear" seems to suggest the word "recollection". But this is the first instance, where memory is being made.
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Thanks for this link, and wow, congrats on that New Year's Day publication.
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"Claims" are also verbal, poetic acts. That sense could be at play here too, how this production of sound and play not merely a process of cooking but also consumption. Maybe in the sense that the performance at the dining table (conversation, eating) forecasts the events of the bed.
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Bargaining for a little, bargain for a touch, a liberty, an estrangement, a characteristic turkey.
The "characteristic turkey" (just the sound of that!) follows "an estrangement" which seem to me also a formal estrangement, the cadence and feel (and type) of the first four suddenly thrown off by her pièce de résistance.
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I don't think the reference to genitalia is at all out of place, and I'm glad you brought it up. And it's "characteristic": so maybe the male presence was perceived as an inevitable, tolerable intrusion or something of a threat in the space between Stein and her lover.
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So maybe it's beef vs turkey (at some point), about which of the plates will take the table, and that it could also be a question of identity if not politics (and maybe economics, as it "bargains for a touch").
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Looking also at a, b, c, d, definitions, as I feel that the words "sinking" and "rise" put so close to "standard" tends toward that image of a flag maybe in the context of a conquest, a contest, a demarcation of territory.
Please be the beef, please beef, pleasure is not wailing.
Hm. Hysterics does not a poem make? Is this a call for substance? But if we're looking at the processing of food, wailing would happen maybe as animal becomes beef. Or if the cook or butcher is injured in some way? Could it also occur while consuming, eating? Or afterwards?
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I only had a vague idea of what kosher is, much less how it's done. This connection is indeed fertile: the idea of "pleasing" the beef is there, of somehow easing the living animal into the state of death, preparing it (and ritual participants too, I think) for food and what it means, what it means to take something like this on the table, into the self.
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Cloudiness what is cloudiness, is it a lining, is it a roll, is it melting.
Stanza 31 plays with several things at once. There's the silver lining and the rolling of thunder among others. Melting... could that be rain? Such a painterly way of putting it.
It's all of a single line (lining?), perhaps a lesson on evocation, that you need only see (lining), hear (roll), and feel (melting) certain select details to account for the whole sky. It begins and returns to taste: the cloudiness of the gravy or soup maybe, the roll on the side, the butter.
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Lunch time here so I can imagine some sort of lining with pastries and cakes. Maybe the side dishes "line" the entree, or the dishes are lined-up, or it's yes silver, a literal lining along the edges of the plate.
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Dirty silverware? On to 33...
A recital, what is a recital, it is an organ and use does not strengthen valor, it soothes medicine.
I imagine someone playing music at meal time, Christmas or New Year. That curious ending sounds to me like "preaching to the choir," or how artists (or those with an artistic temperament or tendency) are the only ones to ever "get" other artists.
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I've been reading some Barthelme, and his view of Stein (alongside Joyce) sounded perfect: that she is party to making an object out of literature, that is not about something but a thing-in-itself "like a rock or a refrigerator." The recital and organ do not merely accompany each other, they are same, solid, able to produce music. And this music, her music, it does not serve catharsis is the old Greek sense, but by reviving the language itself, by soothing the "medicine."
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The word "increase" here and the context of your discussion makes me think that they're trying for a relationship were both individuals are freed rather than restricted, the "string" thus being redesigned for their intents. As for 34...
A transfer, a large transfer, a little transfer, some transfer, clouds and tracks do transfer, a transfer is not neglected.
In terms of food, clouds seem to me steam, also the dimming of the clear liquid as it becomes broth. Heat transfer has ever defined the process of cooking, a central consideration when living off the land. Tracks are more difficult in this level. But if I'm following the Karren's reading of the pioneer-in-Stein, then there's the possibility of seeing a dynamic process (collecting firewood, butchering, going to the market) making possible a couple of hours of cooking, standing in more or less the same spot and just cooking. All those errands are in that pot. And later, in the stomach.
Unburdening? An emotional, physical connection? These are here.
Conversation too. And the poem itself as a transfer, even the misreadings, all of that is communicated, assimilated (even if only a little), proven indelible.
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That would be a great connection to make, and I'd love to think that... whether it's there or not. I'm trying to remember Macbeth, him trying to squeeze some clarity from the witches. I'm seeing Stein's 'cloudiness' as important, vital, even if the brew (and the words) of the witches were necessarily 'cloudy'. Macbeth would project his longings into the words, seeing what he wanted to see and establishing a set of plans upon that vision. If Stein is making spells for us here, it seems the acceptable reader-position is that of the Thane of Glamis.
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Set 8, 2015
Notes on John Ashbery’s “For John Clare”
Kind of empty in the way it sees everything, the earth gets to its feet and salutes the sky. More of a success at it this time than most others it is. The feeling that the sky might be in the back of someone’s mind. Then there is no telling how many there are. They grace everything—bush and tree—to take the roisterer’s mind off his caroling—so it’s like a smooth switch back. To what was aired in their previous conniption fit. There is so much to be seen everywhere that it’s like not getting used to it, only there is so much it never feels new, never any different. You are standing looking at that building and you cannot take it all in, certain details are already hazy and the mind boggles. What will it all be like in five years’ time when you try to remember? Will there have been boards in between the grass part and the edge of the street? As long as that couple is stopping to look in that window over there we cannot go. We feel like they have to tell us we can, but they never look our way and they are already gone, gone far into the future—the night of time. If we could look at a photograph of it and say there they are, they never really stopped but there they are. There is so much to be said, and on the surface of it very little gets said.
There ought to be room for more things, for a spreading out, like. Being immersed in the details of rock and field and slope—letting them come to you for once, and then meeting them halfway would be so much easier—if they took an ingenuous pride in being in one’s blood. Alas, we perceive them if at all as those things that were meant to be put aside—costumes of the supporting actors or voice trilling at the end of a narrow enclosed street. You can do nothing with them. Not even offer to pay.
It is possible that finally, like coming to the end of a long, barely perceptible rise, there is mutual cohesion and interaction. The whole scene is fixed in your mind, the music all present, as though you could see each note as well as hear it. I say this because there is an uneasiness in things just now. Waiting for something to be over before you are forced to notice it. The pollarded trees scarcely bucking the wind—and yet it’s keen, it makes you fall over. Clabbered sky. Seasons that pass with a rush. After all it’s their time too—nothing says they aren’t to make something of it. As for Jenny Wren, she cares, hopping about on her little twig like she was tryin’ to tell us somethin’, but that’s just it, she couldn’t even if she wanted to—dumb bird. But the others—and they in some way must know too—it would never occur to them to want to, even if they could take the first step of the terrible journey toward feeling somebody should act, that ends in utter confusion and hopelessness, east of the sun and west of the moon. So their comment is: “No comment.” Meanwhile the whole history of probabilities is coming to life, starting in the upper left-hand corner, like a sail.
[ Poetry Foundation ]
[ PennSound ]
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There is so much to be said, and on the surface of it very little gets said.
Yes, and the form itself is expansive, "spreading" out to a three-paragraph piece. Maybe a breath for us after two less wordy poems?
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Jenny Wren could be another Dickens reference (Ashbery's ModPo poem "Hard Times" might have referenced a Dickens novel with the same title), this time from the novel Our Mutual Friend.
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Meanwhile the whole history of probabilities is coming to life, starting in the upper left-hand corner, like a sail.
Sounds like printed history, maybe one that begins with the letter A. Because A (and the number 4) would seem like a hieroglyph (or ideogram?) that both mimics and simplifies an image like the sail in order to involve it in language, rally it toward the encoding of history (which makes/defines history). We could be dealing with systems of meaning-making here, how perhaps the poetics in Ashbery's time differ from those of Ashbery in terms of language and logic though they seem to share the same form to every other printed text: one letter at a time, proceeding from the upper-left hand corner, on any given page.
(Or I could be stretching it as I often do with words. And would love to do sometime, with sails.)
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Clare's "To John Clare" doesn't answer its first question. It's as if John's answer to his own question necessarily take him outdoors, to what he perceives there (so that "outside" is "home"). As if the answer to "how are you" is "this is what I see and hear and smell".
His identity already doubled by addressing and answering himself seems to extend to the bookman and the little boy. His real situation ("how fare you") lost or merged or (to use Susan's inspired word) fully immersed in somebody's experience of fiction.
With lots of pictures, and good stories too,
And Jack the Giant-killer's high renown.
Thank you so much for this co-poem.
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They grace everything—bush and tree—to take the roisterer’s mind off his caroling—so it’s like a smooth switch back. To what was aired in their previous conniption fit.
Christmas tree! There are (at least) two types of sounds here: the caroling and the tantrum. Carols are done for both celebration and a little profit. Patronage, done in the same spirit. Poets sometimes refer to their poems as songs, but to specifically call it caroling in relation to Clare (or with Clare in mind) seems to emphasize the poignant economic conditions that attended (perhaps guided, even drove) Clare's poetry.
It's compelling, particularly if the roisterer (Clare?) takes his mind off his caroling while in the act. It's dehumanizing, I think, as if a stage were set-up, a whole season, with the purpose of alienating a man from his voice. And it might be doubly alienating if Clare's poetry is seen as caroling, something done to make ends meet, parceling the soul in packages of sound and image.
Something was "aired" in the tantrum, perhaps this was Clare breaking out, so that against the normal-functioning poet (roisterer, caroler) the depressive is seen not as anomaly but in fact the truer aspect of this "sweet man".
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Cubism is my preferred entry point, maybe because it was exposure to Stein that informs my take on Ashbery. It's as if it's her "difference" in my lens that allows (or hinders) my view of Ashbery. Not entirely sure why this is the case, but the effect of it is that we see each sentence (or line, or phrase) as an aspect or facet instead of a narrative or logical development of the previous statements. Narrative and logical developments have been reduced to mere options (becoming richer too, in a paradoxical sense), but they're still there.
Just a personal door, that's all. It's probably a misstep to enter here rather than the explicit reference: surrealism and Chirico. Some of the lines seem to quite literally describe the source painting. Let's have the first one:
Kind of empty in the way it sees everything, the earth gets to its feet and salutes the sky.
Neither the dummy nor the white figure seems to be saluting. There's a giant inside the sketch that's at least looking up (the earth on its feet, as in Antaeus or Atlas?). Perhaps the easel, the frame (inside the frame) itself is doing the saluting,on its wooden feet, the painting (and the act of painting) both an extension of the earth and a manner of depicting it (as well as the sky). "Kind of empty" could refer to the dummy and figure's respective (non-)gazes, perhaps its a comment on surrealism itself (or to John Clare, as had been mentioned), or again literally, it's the inside frame (or dream) which is skeletal at best, a collection of perspective lines and squiggles that could either be seen as an unfinished aspect of a complete thing (which then characterizes the whole to which it belongs) or as a whole in-itself, an it-is-what-it-is; it's not a sketch of something that's about to be, it's no foretaste, it's done and in that way it could be a repudiation of the larger whole to which it belongs.
It'll be interesting to see something like this problem of placement play out in terms of the two major poets in this poem: sender and addressee, subject and object. Is Ashbery's poetry sitting beside Clare's, running after it, towering over it, or cooling in its shadow? Is he depicting it, appropriating it, or allowing himself to play some sort of belated part in it?
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Will there have been boards in between the grass part and the edge of the street?
For some reason, this line takes me back to an issue I once read Hass tackle (a few beats before the Bate biography came out) about Clare's lack of punctuation and how some editors choose to punctuate the poems while others let the poems stand the way these were set in Clare's hand, before these were sent to the printers (see correctors versus the leave-alones). According to Robert Hass: "there is evidence that [Clare] expected the help of his editors with regularizing punctuation and spelling."
As long as that couple is stopping to look in that window over there we cannot go.
And this line makes me think of the disputes regarding the copyright to Clare's work. Or perhaps it could refer to the editors (Robinson and Summerfield maybe?), or all the middlemen (and profiteers?) between poet and reader.
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Will there have been boards in between the grass part and the edge of the street?
I attempted to read this by setting country images against those of the city. But aside from a building, and how this is a street instead of a road, there's too little of the city mouse to see. It's possible I can salvage this framework by not being so vulgar about it and look more closely at the nuanced differences in the way a John Clare contemplated the landscape and the manner in which a contemporary cosmopolitan would later regard a similar scene, but now with Clare and Clare-as-history figuring as inextricable components of it.
Your parenthetical is intriguing. I'll search a bit to know more about these specific evils. Hope I'm on the right track.
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The way Ashbery shuffles his scenes and references makes me think that he's intending it for John Clare as offering, missive, criticism, see how far we've gotten because of you, and/or see how far apart we are. These, and perhaps more. Maybe it's a poetic annotation of John Clare's poems and positions, as had been suggested a few times above.
My usual take on Ashbery is akin to my view of Stein: a cubist at heart, taking in a lot of POVs and positions simultaneously, making possible the belief (if only for a moment) that all the positions have been considered, the best snaps presented in the most enticing possible way without reverting to the abandoned hut of the singular perspective.
I applied it to this poem, but it might have been the wrong thing to do. Let's consider the YOU statements and see what's in there.
1ST PARAGRAPH
You are standing looking at that building and you cannot take it all in, certain details are already hazy and the mind boggles. (Could be referring to Clare, could be talking to Clare, convincing him of his limits. Or my limits, a reader of his poem. Or the general "You", as in "One is standing looking at that building..." which could therefore be any possible person, including Ashbery. This is complicated by the possibility that Clare or his corpus is that building, giving rise to doublings, mirrorings, all the delicious permutations that might be, indeed, impossible to take in.)
What will it all be like in five years’ time when you try to remember? (He could be simultaneously talking to Clare, the reader, and himself. It's fascinating if he's sort of dear-ghosting Clare, telling him about his memory and mental state. Hmm. That would make Ashbery Clare's ghost of christmas future... and A Christmas Carol is another string from Dickens so...)
2ND PARAGRAPH
Being immersed in the details of rock and field and slope—letting them come to you for once, and then meeting them halfway would be so much easier—if they took an ingenuous pride in being in one’s blood. (If the appositive is to Clare, then it's as if he's telling him how to be better suited to poetry, perhaps to life. Clearly a criticism. But how can anything be clear in Ashbery? I'm also taking this as a guide of sort to reading Ashbery's poems, maybe also Clare's.)
You can do nothing with them. (Jumps at me as if the general any-person You, but if it's John Clare who can't even offer payment, hmm. If it's the reader, perhaps its the non-poetic type, one who could do nothing with all the details and actors and costumes that attend daily, seen always as backdrop... if seen at all.)
3RD PARAGRAPH
The whole scene is fixed in your mind, the music all present, as though you could see each note as well as hear it. (This contradicts the first You-sentence in the 1ST PARAGRAPH. But how did that come about?)
Waiting for something to be over before you are forced to notice it. (Quite possibly the reader or Ashbery before the poem was written, ie, before the poem forced him to "notice" John Clare. If John Clare's the YOU, then what's that something? Is this about the mental state again, leaving sanity behind? Is this about the belatedness of poetry, perhaps of all art, how hindsight throws all sorts of new light on the previous depictions?)
The pollarded trees scarcely bucking the wind—and yet it’s keen, it makes you fall over. (Yes, among many other things, it's an elegy. It brings John Clare's presence into the poem, has him wafting in and out of the "boards" between the words and scenes, makes him frame and figure and possibly co-reader and co-poet. If "pollarded trees" alludes to the subject matter and "scarcely bucking the wind" as well as "it's keen" brings to mind the effect of Clare's poetry, then who falls over in the last phrase? The reader? Or is it Clare... his vision clearly acute, but the cost of it more so?)
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I was thinking of the WE statements some time after I tried reading the YOU ones. You were looking at the THEY statements, and some of them overlap with these WEs. I'd like to read them as any or all of the following expressions of solidarity:
1 WE JOHNS: Clare and Ashbery
2 WE POETS: Something more inclusive, and could perhaps be closer to general metapoetic statements than if we look at it through the WE JOHN lens. Maybe these poets are the newer flock, as opposed to Clare and the earlier generations.
3 WE HERE: Ashbery and the reader
As long as that couple is stopping to look in that window over there we cannot go.
"That couple" could be the THEY of the next statements. Whatever they are, they're keeping the WEs from the window. Or, from going anywhere, not necessarily to the window. It could be a case of looking at people who are looking at something, and maybe WE are enrapt, attending their attention.
These could be just the "usual" poetic voyeurism: poets looking at people, particularly at the way these people view their world. This has a self-reflexive aspect. The poet looking at people looking is paying attention to attention itself, his/her own looking included.
This becomes very fascinating for me if THEY are the older poets, their poetic vision an object of the poetic vision of WE newer poets. It's also a hindrance, in a way. An Ashbery cannot now look at a piece of the action without looking also at the way a Clare saw the same thing. And since that vision has informed his, maybe there's no way that the past might step away from any attempt to view the unforeseeable future.
Or maybe there is and Ashbery has figured it out. Maybe the keys are kept in the elusive way this poem is composed.
We feel like they have to tell us we can, but they never look our way and they are already gone, gone far into the future—the night of time.
Assuming THEY are our predecessors, then the usual idea is that they've gone on ahead of us, the voice we hear's but the echoes of their life's work. They never look our way because they can't (being ahead of us), but the way it's said here implies an option, that old poets could speak to his or her expected followers or future readers. Maybe a critique of Clare? Or really, just some wistfulness and pining on our part?
If we could look at a photograph of it and say there they are, they never really stopped but there they are.
This line (along with the previous one) has me thinking of the figures in the Chirico dream. They do not merely tower, but seem also in motion, but since POV's being abstracted, framed, they seem to be going nowhere. Stillness (and silence) is the generic property of paintings (to paraphrase Berger), but perspective, line, and sometimes swirls of color try to depict motion. So really, nobody was ever going anywhere. But when you abstract perspective, make sure it's seen as a device, then the figures seem (at least to me) not merely still but arrested.
Alas, we perceive them if at all as those things that were meant to be put aside—costumes of the supporting actors or voice trilling at the end of a narrow enclosed street.
Still assuming THEY as predecessors, seeing them as costumes seems an honest appraisal of our consideration. Whitman is ever only a part of a syllabus, and Clare is a book on the shelf. If we get Clare only through Ashbery, then Clare is further removed from us. Regarding the previous poets as "costumes" diffuses ownership. It's possible to take this as an image that degrades and/or democratizes.
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So much in your world to enjoy now! You-who. Very happy for you. We'll have little hands soon too, by December, if elements align and we carry to term. I think it's important how you spelled things out. I'd like to take on poverty. Along with the histories you pointed out, some of the lines seem to go there. It's a sound way to begin reading something like this: There ought to be room for more things, for a spreading out, like. Yes, it's metapoetic but it's also basically a question of property, of boundaries imposed. This might as well be an incomplete sentence upon which period is imposed, so much like a stone marker that tells you (perhaps unjustly) the limit of your land and labor.
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Thanks!
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I'm joining in on the thanks, if you don't mind. Thank you for always returning us to each other. Now look who's back as well.
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There ought to be room for more things, for a spreading out, like.
Glad to see you again. Will be reading these links in a while. For now, this Ashbery line you quoted (pleasantly) puzzles me. That "like" kind of multiplies the space by a factor of ten, maybe much more. It has this weird vibe for me, it opens it all up with that (may I call it) gesture, and somehow also, I can't get past it. Maybe it (the line, this poem, Clare's poetry) doesn't spread out in the usual sense of "expansion" but in the sense that it always recaptures, draws you back into its space.
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Yes, there's that! While I agree with the immersion in or deep cognizance of the present, I don't know if this is entirely ahistorical. I'd like to bring your two angles together. I propose that there's actually a saturation of temporal perspectives (too much time from so many angles, evident even in the usage of the word "like" as an ancient simile cue, a sign of preference, perhaps withheld affection, maybe a lost dialectal mannerism, and yes the colloquial use) that the effect is that time becomes mere surface (time references), one cannot rely upon it for perspective (no single perspective more privileged than the other). One might come at Clare from the future (recalling an ancestor) or the present (dialogue with a co-poet), or maybe even the past (coming upon him as if a ghost)!
All the ghosts at once, Ebenezer! So how will they help you shape your life? You can do nothing with them. Not even offer to pay. They're all speaking at once (all of them a Clare, all of them an Ashbery) So [in effect] their comment is: “No comment.”
All these amount to having a (relative) sense of origin ("starting in the upper left-hand corner") but no a clear sense of direction ("the whole history of probabilities is coming to life"). But the tone is light, disarmingly so. It feels liberating, as risky and wondrous as the open sea ("like a sail") particularly if viewed against Clare's rootedness to the land, his poetry and struggles square as they are on the ground.
There ought to be room for more things, for a spreading out, like. / like a sail.
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We've thrown in our impressions about it, our interpretations or attempts at interpretations, and now it looks as if we try and assemble a mini-collage (within a collage) based upon the word LIKE alone. I thought to dwell a bit longer on the six times the word was used in the poem. Here's the most unusual use of it:
(A) There ought to be room for more things, for a spreading out, like.
Of the five remaining instances, three used LIKE as one would AS IF:
(B) They grace everything—bush and tree—to take the roisterer’s mind off his caroling—so it’s like a smooth switch back.
(C) There is so much to be seen everywhere that it’s like not getting used to it, only there is so much it never feels new, never any different.
(D) As for Jenny Wren, she cares, hopping about on her little twig like she was tryin’ to tell us somethin’, but that’s just it, she couldn’t even if she wanted to—dumb bird.
All three has something to do with internal states. B seems the most certain about where the mind is (well, the speaker sounds certain, though we might not be quite so sure about what exactly is so smoothly switching to and from where). The second and third (C and D) seem to me not as sure: in the second case we're attempting to appraise the general reception while in the third we're guessing Jenny Wren's intentions. I think D is using LIKE as one would ALMOST AS IF. C might be doing so as well.
Meanwhile...
(E) What will it all be like in five years’ time when you try to remember?
Here LIKE seems but an extension of BE, as in "how will things be / what will things turn out to be in five year's time?" But I'm fond of LIKE here, because it cues internal states again: memory, perception.The way it's phrased, there's a hint of possible causation. The seeming of things (be like) might be dependent upon the attempt to recall. "It all" might turn out to be something else altogether (or might not be anything at all) if you don't try to remember.
And in the last instance, LIKE cuing a simple simile in a sentence which possibly channels the articulation of the memory:
(F) Meanwhile the whole history of probabilities is coming to life, starting in the upper left-hand corner, like a sail.
In these last two cases, past and future are (con?)fused together. In E, someone (in the present) is wondering how the future will be (five years time) when it becomes someone's past as this someone moves forward (a more distant future, a bit or much more than five years time).
F unsettles. History is a record of something that has already happened. It's just one thing. (e.g. Either Clare was committed to the asylum or he wasn't. Either the patrons committed him to posterity or they neglected to attempt it.) We look into the future and see probabilities all the time. A "history of probabilities" looks at the past not only as it is but also as people hoped it would turn out, as people feared it might go, including perhaps all those ghostly byways that were both unforeseen and unrealized.
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Yes! That turns it around a bit, history both as an articulation of probabilities and as something that could only be articulated by probabilities (weighed with and against each other)
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It happens all the time, nature abused to the point that the abuses return to us as afflictions. I had been looking at pruning here as a decorative operation, as something that might reflect on poetry or the criticism (or use) of poetry, particularly as it applies to how Clare's poetry has been managed (and mismanaged) by him and those who have inherited (or appropriated) his "estate".
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There ought to be room for more things, for a spreading out, like. Being immersed in the details of rock and field and slope—letting them come to you for once, and then meeting them halfway would be so much easier—if they took an ingenuous pride in being in one’s blood. Alas, we perceive them if at all as those things that were meant to be put aside—costumes of the supporting actors or voice trilling at the end of a narrow enclosed street. You can do nothing with them. Not even offer to pay.
It is possible that finally, like coming to the end of a long, barely perceptible rise, there is mutual cohesion and interaction. The whole scene is fixed in your mind, the music all present, as though you could see each note as well as hear it. I say this because there is an uneasiness in things just now. Waiting for something to be over before you are forced to notice it. The pollarded trees scarcely bucking the wind—and yet it’s keen, it makes you fall over. Clabbered sky. Seasons that pass with a rush. After all it’s their time too—nothing says they aren’t to make something of it. As for Jenny Wren, she cares, hopping about on her little twig like she was tryin’ to tell us somethin’, but that’s just it, she couldn’t even if she wanted to—dumb bird. But the others—and they in some way must know too—it would never occur to them to want to, even if they could take the first step of the terrible journey toward feeling somebody should act, that ends in utter confusion and hopelessness, east of the sun and west of the moon. So their comment is: “No comment.” Meanwhile the whole history of probabilities is coming to life, starting in the upper left-hand corner, like a sail.
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[ Poetry Foundation ]
[ PennSound ]
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There is so much to be said, and on the surface of it very little gets said.
Yes, and the form itself is expansive, "spreading" out to a three-paragraph piece. Maybe a breath for us after two less wordy poems?
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Jenny Wren could be another Dickens reference (Ashbery's ModPo poem "Hard Times" might have referenced a Dickens novel with the same title), this time from the novel Our Mutual Friend.
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Meanwhile the whole history of probabilities is coming to life, starting in the upper left-hand corner, like a sail.
Sounds like printed history, maybe one that begins with the letter A. Because A (and the number 4) would seem like a hieroglyph (or ideogram?) that both mimics and simplifies an image like the sail in order to involve it in language, rally it toward the encoding of history (which makes/defines history). We could be dealing with systems of meaning-making here, how perhaps the poetics in Ashbery's time differ from those of Ashbery in terms of language and logic though they seem to share the same form to every other printed text: one letter at a time, proceeding from the upper-left hand corner, on any given page.
(Or I could be stretching it as I often do with words. And would love to do sometime, with sails.)
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Clare's "To John Clare" doesn't answer its first question. It's as if John's answer to his own question necessarily take him outdoors, to what he perceives there (so that "outside" is "home"). As if the answer to "how are you" is "this is what I see and hear and smell".
His identity already doubled by addressing and answering himself seems to extend to the bookman and the little boy. His real situation ("how fare you") lost or merged or (to use Susan's inspired word) fully immersed in somebody's experience of fiction.
With lots of pictures, and good stories too,
And Jack the Giant-killer's high renown.
Thank you so much for this co-poem.
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They grace everything—bush and tree—to take the roisterer’s mind off his caroling—so it’s like a smooth switch back. To what was aired in their previous conniption fit.
Christmas tree! There are (at least) two types of sounds here: the caroling and the tantrum. Carols are done for both celebration and a little profit. Patronage, done in the same spirit. Poets sometimes refer to their poems as songs, but to specifically call it caroling in relation to Clare (or with Clare in mind) seems to emphasize the poignant economic conditions that attended (perhaps guided, even drove) Clare's poetry.
It's compelling, particularly if the roisterer (Clare?) takes his mind off his caroling while in the act. It's dehumanizing, I think, as if a stage were set-up, a whole season, with the purpose of alienating a man from his voice. And it might be doubly alienating if Clare's poetry is seen as caroling, something done to make ends meet, parceling the soul in packages of sound and image.
Something was "aired" in the tantrum, perhaps this was Clare breaking out, so that against the normal-functioning poet (roisterer, caroler) the depressive is seen not as anomaly but in fact the truer aspect of this "sweet man".
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Cubism is my preferred entry point, maybe because it was exposure to Stein that informs my take on Ashbery. It's as if it's her "difference" in my lens that allows (or hinders) my view of Ashbery. Not entirely sure why this is the case, but the effect of it is that we see each sentence (or line, or phrase) as an aspect or facet instead of a narrative or logical development of the previous statements. Narrative and logical developments have been reduced to mere options (becoming richer too, in a paradoxical sense), but they're still there.
Just a personal door, that's all. It's probably a misstep to enter here rather than the explicit reference: surrealism and Chirico. Some of the lines seem to quite literally describe the source painting. Let's have the first one:
Kind of empty in the way it sees everything, the earth gets to its feet and salutes the sky.
Neither the dummy nor the white figure seems to be saluting. There's a giant inside the sketch that's at least looking up (the earth on its feet, as in Antaeus or Atlas?). Perhaps the easel, the frame (inside the frame) itself is doing the saluting,on its wooden feet, the painting (and the act of painting) both an extension of the earth and a manner of depicting it (as well as the sky). "Kind of empty" could refer to the dummy and figure's respective (non-)gazes, perhaps its a comment on surrealism itself (or to John Clare, as had been mentioned), or again literally, it's the inside frame (or dream) which is skeletal at best, a collection of perspective lines and squiggles that could either be seen as an unfinished aspect of a complete thing (which then characterizes the whole to which it belongs) or as a whole in-itself, an it-is-what-it-is; it's not a sketch of something that's about to be, it's no foretaste, it's done and in that way it could be a repudiation of the larger whole to which it belongs.
It'll be interesting to see something like this problem of placement play out in terms of the two major poets in this poem: sender and addressee, subject and object. Is Ashbery's poetry sitting beside Clare's, running after it, towering over it, or cooling in its shadow? Is he depicting it, appropriating it, or allowing himself to play some sort of belated part in it?
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Will there have been boards in between the grass part and the edge of the street?
For some reason, this line takes me back to an issue I once read Hass tackle (a few beats before the Bate biography came out) about Clare's lack of punctuation and how some editors choose to punctuate the poems while others let the poems stand the way these were set in Clare's hand, before these were sent to the printers (see correctors versus the leave-alones). According to Robert Hass: "there is evidence that [Clare] expected the help of his editors with regularizing punctuation and spelling."
As long as that couple is stopping to look in that window over there we cannot go.
And this line makes me think of the disputes regarding the copyright to Clare's work. Or perhaps it could refer to the editors (Robinson and Summerfield maybe?), or all the middlemen (and profiteers?) between poet and reader.
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Will there have been boards in between the grass part and the edge of the street?
I attempted to read this by setting country images against those of the city. But aside from a building, and how this is a street instead of a road, there's too little of the city mouse to see. It's possible I can salvage this framework by not being so vulgar about it and look more closely at the nuanced differences in the way a John Clare contemplated the landscape and the manner in which a contemporary cosmopolitan would later regard a similar scene, but now with Clare and Clare-as-history figuring as inextricable components of it.
Your parenthetical is intriguing. I'll search a bit to know more about these specific evils. Hope I'm on the right track.
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The way Ashbery shuffles his scenes and references makes me think that he's intending it for John Clare as offering, missive, criticism, see how far we've gotten because of you, and/or see how far apart we are. These, and perhaps more. Maybe it's a poetic annotation of John Clare's poems and positions, as had been suggested a few times above.
My usual take on Ashbery is akin to my view of Stein: a cubist at heart, taking in a lot of POVs and positions simultaneously, making possible the belief (if only for a moment) that all the positions have been considered, the best snaps presented in the most enticing possible way without reverting to the abandoned hut of the singular perspective.
I applied it to this poem, but it might have been the wrong thing to do. Let's consider the YOU statements and see what's in there.
1ST PARAGRAPH
You are standing looking at that building and you cannot take it all in, certain details are already hazy and the mind boggles. (Could be referring to Clare, could be talking to Clare, convincing him of his limits. Or my limits, a reader of his poem. Or the general "You", as in "One is standing looking at that building..." which could therefore be any possible person, including Ashbery. This is complicated by the possibility that Clare or his corpus is that building, giving rise to doublings, mirrorings, all the delicious permutations that might be, indeed, impossible to take in.)
What will it all be like in five years’ time when you try to remember? (He could be simultaneously talking to Clare, the reader, and himself. It's fascinating if he's sort of dear-ghosting Clare, telling him about his memory and mental state. Hmm. That would make Ashbery Clare's ghost of christmas future... and A Christmas Carol is another string from Dickens so...)
2ND PARAGRAPH
Being immersed in the details of rock and field and slope—letting them come to you for once, and then meeting them halfway would be so much easier—if they took an ingenuous pride in being in one’s blood. (If the appositive is to Clare, then it's as if he's telling him how to be better suited to poetry, perhaps to life. Clearly a criticism. But how can anything be clear in Ashbery? I'm also taking this as a guide of sort to reading Ashbery's poems, maybe also Clare's.)
You can do nothing with them. (Jumps at me as if the general any-person You, but if it's John Clare who can't even offer payment, hmm. If it's the reader, perhaps its the non-poetic type, one who could do nothing with all the details and actors and costumes that attend daily, seen always as backdrop... if seen at all.)
3RD PARAGRAPH
The whole scene is fixed in your mind, the music all present, as though you could see each note as well as hear it. (This contradicts the first You-sentence in the 1ST PARAGRAPH. But how did that come about?)
Waiting for something to be over before you are forced to notice it. (Quite possibly the reader or Ashbery before the poem was written, ie, before the poem forced him to "notice" John Clare. If John Clare's the YOU, then what's that something? Is this about the mental state again, leaving sanity behind? Is this about the belatedness of poetry, perhaps of all art, how hindsight throws all sorts of new light on the previous depictions?)
The pollarded trees scarcely bucking the wind—and yet it’s keen, it makes you fall over. (Yes, among many other things, it's an elegy. It brings John Clare's presence into the poem, has him wafting in and out of the "boards" between the words and scenes, makes him frame and figure and possibly co-reader and co-poet. If "pollarded trees" alludes to the subject matter and "scarcely bucking the wind" as well as "it's keen" brings to mind the effect of Clare's poetry, then who falls over in the last phrase? The reader? Or is it Clare... his vision clearly acute, but the cost of it more so?)
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I was thinking of the WE statements some time after I tried reading the YOU ones. You were looking at the THEY statements, and some of them overlap with these WEs. I'd like to read them as any or all of the following expressions of solidarity:
1 WE JOHNS: Clare and Ashbery
2 WE POETS: Something more inclusive, and could perhaps be closer to general metapoetic statements than if we look at it through the WE JOHN lens. Maybe these poets are the newer flock, as opposed to Clare and the earlier generations.
3 WE HERE: Ashbery and the reader
As long as that couple is stopping to look in that window over there we cannot go.
"That couple" could be the THEY of the next statements. Whatever they are, they're keeping the WEs from the window. Or, from going anywhere, not necessarily to the window. It could be a case of looking at people who are looking at something, and maybe WE are enrapt, attending their attention.
These could be just the "usual" poetic voyeurism: poets looking at people, particularly at the way these people view their world. This has a self-reflexive aspect. The poet looking at people looking is paying attention to attention itself, his/her own looking included.
This becomes very fascinating for me if THEY are the older poets, their poetic vision an object of the poetic vision of WE newer poets. It's also a hindrance, in a way. An Ashbery cannot now look at a piece of the action without looking also at the way a Clare saw the same thing. And since that vision has informed his, maybe there's no way that the past might step away from any attempt to view the unforeseeable future.
Or maybe there is and Ashbery has figured it out. Maybe the keys are kept in the elusive way this poem is composed.
We feel like they have to tell us we can, but they never look our way and they are already gone, gone far into the future—the night of time.
Assuming THEY are our predecessors, then the usual idea is that they've gone on ahead of us, the voice we hear's but the echoes of their life's work. They never look our way because they can't (being ahead of us), but the way it's said here implies an option, that old poets could speak to his or her expected followers or future readers. Maybe a critique of Clare? Or really, just some wistfulness and pining on our part?
If we could look at a photograph of it and say there they are, they never really stopped but there they are.
This line (along with the previous one) has me thinking of the figures in the Chirico dream. They do not merely tower, but seem also in motion, but since POV's being abstracted, framed, they seem to be going nowhere. Stillness (and silence) is the generic property of paintings (to paraphrase Berger), but perspective, line, and sometimes swirls of color try to depict motion. So really, nobody was ever going anywhere. But when you abstract perspective, make sure it's seen as a device, then the figures seem (at least to me) not merely still but arrested.
Alas, we perceive them if at all as those things that were meant to be put aside—costumes of the supporting actors or voice trilling at the end of a narrow enclosed street.
Still assuming THEY as predecessors, seeing them as costumes seems an honest appraisal of our consideration. Whitman is ever only a part of a syllabus, and Clare is a book on the shelf. If we get Clare only through Ashbery, then Clare is further removed from us. Regarding the previous poets as "costumes" diffuses ownership. It's possible to take this as an image that degrades and/or democratizes.
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So much in your world to enjoy now! You-who. Very happy for you. We'll have little hands soon too, by December, if elements align and we carry to term. I think it's important how you spelled things out. I'd like to take on poverty. Along with the histories you pointed out, some of the lines seem to go there. It's a sound way to begin reading something like this: There ought to be room for more things, for a spreading out, like. Yes, it's metapoetic but it's also basically a question of property, of boundaries imposed. This might as well be an incomplete sentence upon which period is imposed, so much like a stone marker that tells you (perhaps unjustly) the limit of your land and labor.
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Thanks!
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I'm joining in on the thanks, if you don't mind. Thank you for always returning us to each other. Now look who's back as well.
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There ought to be room for more things, for a spreading out, like.
Glad to see you again. Will be reading these links in a while. For now, this Ashbery line you quoted (pleasantly) puzzles me. That "like" kind of multiplies the space by a factor of ten, maybe much more. It has this weird vibe for me, it opens it all up with that (may I call it) gesture, and somehow also, I can't get past it. Maybe it (the line, this poem, Clare's poetry) doesn't spread out in the usual sense of "expansion" but in the sense that it always recaptures, draws you back into its space.
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Yes, there's that! While I agree with the immersion in or deep cognizance of the present, I don't know if this is entirely ahistorical. I'd like to bring your two angles together. I propose that there's actually a saturation of temporal perspectives (too much time from so many angles, evident even in the usage of the word "like" as an ancient simile cue, a sign of preference, perhaps withheld affection, maybe a lost dialectal mannerism, and yes the colloquial use) that the effect is that time becomes mere surface (time references), one cannot rely upon it for perspective (no single perspective more privileged than the other). One might come at Clare from the future (recalling an ancestor) or the present (dialogue with a co-poet), or maybe even the past (coming upon him as if a ghost)!
All the ghosts at once, Ebenezer! So how will they help you shape your life? You can do nothing with them. Not even offer to pay. They're all speaking at once (all of them a Clare, all of them an Ashbery) So [in effect] their comment is: “No comment.”
All these amount to having a (relative) sense of origin ("starting in the upper left-hand corner") but no a clear sense of direction ("the whole history of probabilities is coming to life"). But the tone is light, disarmingly so. It feels liberating, as risky and wondrous as the open sea ("like a sail") particularly if viewed against Clare's rootedness to the land, his poetry and struggles square as they are on the ground.
There ought to be room for more things, for a spreading out, like. / like a sail.
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We've thrown in our impressions about it, our interpretations or attempts at interpretations, and now it looks as if we try and assemble a mini-collage (within a collage) based upon the word LIKE alone. I thought to dwell a bit longer on the six times the word was used in the poem. Here's the most unusual use of it:
(A) There ought to be room for more things, for a spreading out, like.
Of the five remaining instances, three used LIKE as one would AS IF:
(B) They grace everything—bush and tree—to take the roisterer’s mind off his caroling—so it’s like a smooth switch back.
(C) There is so much to be seen everywhere that it’s like not getting used to it, only there is so much it never feels new, never any different.
(D) As for Jenny Wren, she cares, hopping about on her little twig like she was tryin’ to tell us somethin’, but that’s just it, she couldn’t even if she wanted to—dumb bird.
All three has something to do with internal states. B seems the most certain about where the mind is (well, the speaker sounds certain, though we might not be quite so sure about what exactly is so smoothly switching to and from where). The second and third (C and D) seem to me not as sure: in the second case we're attempting to appraise the general reception while in the third we're guessing Jenny Wren's intentions. I think D is using LIKE as one would ALMOST AS IF. C might be doing so as well.
Meanwhile...
(E) What will it all be like in five years’ time when you try to remember?
Here LIKE seems but an extension of BE, as in "how will things be / what will things turn out to be in five year's time?" But I'm fond of LIKE here, because it cues internal states again: memory, perception.The way it's phrased, there's a hint of possible causation. The seeming of things (be like) might be dependent upon the attempt to recall. "It all" might turn out to be something else altogether (or might not be anything at all) if you don't try to remember.
And in the last instance, LIKE cuing a simple simile in a sentence which possibly channels the articulation of the memory:
(F) Meanwhile the whole history of probabilities is coming to life, starting in the upper left-hand corner, like a sail.
In these last two cases, past and future are (con?)fused together. In E, someone (in the present) is wondering how the future will be (five years time) when it becomes someone's past as this someone moves forward (a more distant future, a bit or much more than five years time).
F unsettles. History is a record of something that has already happened. It's just one thing. (e.g. Either Clare was committed to the asylum or he wasn't. Either the patrons committed him to posterity or they neglected to attempt it.) We look into the future and see probabilities all the time. A "history of probabilities" looks at the past not only as it is but also as people hoped it would turn out, as people feared it might go, including perhaps all those ghostly byways that were both unforeseen and unrealized.
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Yes! That turns it around a bit, history both as an articulation of probabilities and as something that could only be articulated by probabilities (weighed with and against each other)
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It happens all the time, nature abused to the point that the abuses return to us as afflictions. I had been looking at pruning here as a decorative operation, as something that might reflect on poetry or the criticism (or use) of poetry, particularly as it applies to how Clare's poetry has been managed (and mismanaged) by him and those who have inherited (or appropriated) his "estate".
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Hul 16, 2015
Notes on John Ashbery’s “A Blessing in Disguise”
Yes, they are alive and can have those colors,
But I, in my soul, am alive too.
I feel I must sing and dance, to tell
Of this in a way, that knowing you may be drawn to me.
And I sing amid despair and isolation
Of the chance to know you, to sing of me
Which are you. You see,
You hold me up to the light in a way
I should never have expected, or suspected, perhaps
Because you always tell me I am you,
And right. The great spruces loom.
I am yours to die with, to desire.
I cannot ever think of me, I desire you
For a room in which the chairs ever
Have their backs turned to the light
Inflicted on the stone and paths, the real trees
That seem to shine at me through a lattice toward you.
If the wild light of this January day is true
I pledge me to be truthful unto you
Whom I cannot ever stop remembering.
Remembering to forgive. Remember to pass beyond you into the day
On the wings of the secret you will never know.
Taking me from myself, in the path
Which the pastel girth of the day has assigned to me.
I prefer “you” in the plural, I want “you”
You must come to me, all golden and pale
Like the dew and the air.
And then I start getting this feeling of exaltation.
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Possibly, the poem itself is speaking, the conceit being its possession of soul, life, an I. “You must come to me, all golden and pale” reminds me of Corman’s “It isnt for want”.
I feel I must sing and dance, to tell
Of this in a way, that knowing you may be drawn to me.
I get from this a way for a poem to mean things, this poem’s particular way, which is emotive, seeking immediacy (like Whitman). That line containing “knowing you may be drawn to me” could mean a couple of different “ways” depending on the which word takes emphasis. Again, these accents are their own defense... (or, in this case: disguise)
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Let me submit a candidate for a paraphrase of those lines. That our “slant” of light, our personal angle, brings to the poem something neither anticipated nor imagined by the poet (or the poem). What’s amazing here is the tone, it could be matter-of-fact (ex: you always have a way of thinking about these things). Could it also be celebratory? Maybe not as explicitly as Whitman’s. In the end, we’re projecting ourselves into all these lines. The poem doesn’t demean that I think (doesn’t say: you’re just telling me I am you), but it doesn’t go all out Whitman either (What I assume, you shall assume).
So this is just me (as “always”) projecting my desires and anxieties onto / alongside / prompted by the openness of this poem.
Upon rereading, that considered shift from expected to “suspected” jumps out.
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Exactly how it is for me too. The lines that take me there are “I pledge me to be truthful unto you / Whom I cannot ever stop remembering” and “Which the pastel girth of the day has assigned to me” though it’s still as puzzling as ever, yet something I accepted, as the “wings of the secret never to be known.” I mean sure, okay, as long as we’re flying there.
And we do.
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“Remembering to forgive. Remember to pass beyond you into the day” Recalling Janus now as old Rome’s marker between wartime and peacetime.
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Colors. I was thinking that the poem could be referring to things other than poetry (prosaic things perhaps, following the Dickinson exploration), the other things that preoccupy us. Colors might mean visual enticements. Might also mean allegiances, as in flags.
It hums well with the play of light throughout the poem, and the room with all those weirdly oriented chairs. Makes me think of the stained-glass that adorn cathedrals.
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Props to versatility. He has very short ones too (found a handful), gems of wit and whimsy. That compare and contrast thread sounds like a good idea, but then I don’t think you’re capable of a bad idea. Ashbery’s curated by deft, able hands in these halls.
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Today’s rereading of the poem, along with your comments, yield me a sense of contentment. To feel the presence of something deeper and unsayable, but also to be at peace with the fact that you'll never ever know, never ever see.
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Perfect! And Gillig does mash-ups. Thanks!
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Your comment on Ashbery’s plural “you” takes me back to Whitman’s large, multitudes-I.
“A Blessing in Disguise” seems a direct response to “Song of Myself”. The title of one can be written over the other, blessing-as-song / song-as-blessing (an understanding of the Whitmanian project: generous offering, promise of plenitude, illumination), self-as-disguise, disguise-as-self (a re-appreciation of “the persona” or masked-I that Whitman overtly wished to strike against, strike off, trying to eliminate the you/I distinction—resulting however, or perhaps it was Whitman’s design all along—in increasing I/I distinctions, creating a great many selves that “contradict myself”).
I found some references to grass (the image elected to serve for/as Whitman’s conceit). Following the light downward “inflicted on the stone and paths, the real trees / That seem to shine at me toward you” I see “you” as the grass.
“The pastel girth of the day,” the sun's halo or its effect, which for the I seems to be illumination but for the you, age and decay, as in the beauty of leaves of grass wilting, "“all golden and pale”.
So perhaps our Ashbery has found a way (or ways, or guises, or poetics) toward Whitman as one who “most honors” him, one “who learns under it to destroy the teacher.”
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Hi. The lines were from Whitman’s “Song of Myself”:
I am the teacher of athletes,
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own,
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
A really strong passage regarding influence. He’s making a contest out of it. Even if one of his athletes (Ginsberg, Ashbery, Pessoa, Pound) were to best Whitman, their feat would only serve to prove the worth of their teacher.
Ashbery asserts himself, registers “despair and isolation,” but also (I think) expresses his gratitude, singing and dancing his “I” to show how much he had learned.
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Thanks for the opportunity you opened. When the Buddha was quoted, I remembered Freud’s reflection on Oedipus where a young man’s passage into manhood was seen as an elaborate rite of killing his father. The father’s shadow threatens the growth of the boy, a sense I get from these lines:
And right. The great spruces loom.
I am yours to die with, to desire.
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Yes, that whole (grand!) Greek business of sons killing fathers, fathers eating sons. If only an opt-out were possible. Maybe JA was attempting something like that here.
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I don’t wish to reduce Ashbery to Whitman (as Whitman already seems ever eager to absorb everything into Whitman), but let me see how far I get reading with everyone here taking WW as my slant of light.
(Which is just my way of saying please don't get too annoyed.)
So perhaps “they” here refers to grass, all the colors they wear through the various seasons (JA: “golden and pale”) but also all the colors they absorb by way of earth and decay (WW: “among black folks as among white, Canuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff...”). Therefore, “they” might echo all those multitudes within Whitman large I.
JA's second line seems an assertion of itself (of the poem) “But I, in my soul, am alive too.” When WW says “I loafe and invite my soul,” he’s inviting the reader, but the reader who has at least partially accepted being of or with WW’s “I”. But while JA seems willing to loafe (even fly), he also wishes to retain his self, his soul.
This, in spite of WW’s (forgivable) claims upon him.
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Yes and yes to you. This is happy work for me too. Glad you brought up Crane and Rimbaud. These I shall now read (with amatory Martory) alongside our JA.
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Let’s keep knotted kisses to ourselves for a long time
Until another day erases
The trace of each passing.
Hello, Martory! Glad to make your acquaintance.
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Yes, and more:
the clear distances of the city the factories without smoke
bathed as at their birth stammered
a trial hello
that only ended however
in this word round as a doubloon
placed on the edge of that day
by a considerate friend
the sun on your arms naked against my cheeks
Thanks!
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Yes, we found a lot here that could also go to the context/culture thread The many accents of his French connection, JA’s friendships, his translation work. I also found a link or two here from you and Jon for those who’d like to read more articles about him.
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A good new image to work with. Perhaps the learning to be done’s waiting outside?
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Snake in the garden? I like your point about his phrases too, stuff like
Yes,
You see,
or suspected, perhaps
And right.
And I wonder how essential they are to his poems. These seem like the kind of phrases you’ll be asked to cut out in poetry workshops. But they contribute to a tentativeness, a sense of the open path, we can walk whichever way our feet might lead us.
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Delicious. And I hope that my last thought before the first night of this new year will be an imagination of these mighty, unperceived trees.
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Mention was made of isolation and despair. Those could be the trials we’re looking for. Or those could be consequences of those trials.
Backtracking to the Greeks, we have Prometheus presenting two packages to the gods. These were proposals, two prototypes, one of which would decide the type sacrifices man would thereafter be required to burn to earn divine favor (ie, blessings). Wiki has it:
Prometheus slew a large ox, and divided it into two piles. In one pile he put all the meat and most of the fat, skillfully covering it with the ox’s grotesque stomach, while in the other pile, he dressed up the bones artfully with shining fat. Prometheus then invited Zeus to choose; Zeus chose the pile of bones.
Blessing in disguise here could be the nourishing meat secured in the “grotesque stomach,” which could be a way of looking at the human lot. Or, at poetry as a thing to be unwrapped, laid bare, consumed.
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A take on the question of intent, though I don’t think it’ll be answering any of the questions above except for “What do you think?”
Attracted to poets who are concerned with opening their work, making sure it is intrinsically many things for many people and many things also for one very studious reader. Maybe because this poet is in touch with the fact that the making of a thing (poem, Nobel’s dynamite, rice cake, treatise) does not arise from only one cause but from many, that the process perhaps partakes from even her smallest desire, her secret anxiety.
This is what I love about Dickinson and Stein, Niedecker and Perelman. If, at the outset, the intent is for a poem to mean in many directions, then we’re cool. A poet might very well react to a reader’s surprising (brain-beyond-the-groove) reading with lines like Ashbery’s:
You hold me up to the light in a way
I should never have expected, or suspected, perhaps
Most of the writers I know are prosaic in the sense that the work must mean one thing (often referred to as “the main idea”), must get us to the point in the shortest, most memorable route possible, and yes, it’s an indispensable way of composing. It runs industries, assembles the broiler, constitutes nations, etc. But it would be impoverishment were that the only way to do poetry.
For writers like that, one-track and fabulously so, I try to honor them by getting their intent and nodding my head repeatedly. But for others like Ashbery, I can really just walk around. That’s his gift. I could try to get his intent without that having to be the point, like a game of chess in the context of a wide-open afternoon, so winning is not the thing, the sunset is.
Even when Ashbery tries to explain a poem of his, he words it carefully so that it sounds as if he’s just one reader of the poem (just so happens he’s also the writer). He just got to the poem before everybody else, but we can all have a look-see. And it’s poems like his “These Lacustrine Cities” and “A Blessing in Disguise” (charged with the writer's intent, but welcoming of the reader’s intent and—paraphrasing you in the webcast—moment and temperament) that make possible such northern lightly, quantum physical, mystically humming threads as these.
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But I, in my soul, am alive too.
I feel I must sing and dance, to tell
Of this in a way, that knowing you may be drawn to me.
And I sing amid despair and isolation
Of the chance to know you, to sing of me
Which are you. You see,
You hold me up to the light in a way
I should never have expected, or suspected, perhaps
Because you always tell me I am you,
And right. The great spruces loom.
I am yours to die with, to desire.
I cannot ever think of me, I desire you
For a room in which the chairs ever
Have their backs turned to the light
Inflicted on the stone and paths, the real trees
That seem to shine at me through a lattice toward you.
If the wild light of this January day is true
I pledge me to be truthful unto you
Whom I cannot ever stop remembering.
Remembering to forgive. Remember to pass beyond you into the day
On the wings of the secret you will never know.
Taking me from myself, in the path
Which the pastel girth of the day has assigned to me.
I prefer “you” in the plural, I want “you”
You must come to me, all golden and pale
Like the dew and the air.
And then I start getting this feeling of exaltation.
*
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Possibly, the poem itself is speaking, the conceit being its possession of soul, life, an I. “You must come to me, all golden and pale” reminds me of Corman’s “It isnt for want”.
I feel I must sing and dance, to tell
Of this in a way, that knowing you may be drawn to me.
I get from this a way for a poem to mean things, this poem’s particular way, which is emotive, seeking immediacy (like Whitman). That line containing “knowing you may be drawn to me” could mean a couple of different “ways” depending on the which word takes emphasis. Again, these accents are their own defense... (or, in this case: disguise)
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Let me submit a candidate for a paraphrase of those lines. That our “slant” of light, our personal angle, brings to the poem something neither anticipated nor imagined by the poet (or the poem). What’s amazing here is the tone, it could be matter-of-fact (ex: you always have a way of thinking about these things). Could it also be celebratory? Maybe not as explicitly as Whitman’s. In the end, we’re projecting ourselves into all these lines. The poem doesn’t demean that I think (doesn’t say: you’re just telling me I am you), but it doesn’t go all out Whitman either (What I assume, you shall assume).
So this is just me (as “always”) projecting my desires and anxieties onto / alongside / prompted by the openness of this poem.
Upon rereading, that considered shift from expected to “suspected” jumps out.
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Exactly how it is for me too. The lines that take me there are “I pledge me to be truthful unto you / Whom I cannot ever stop remembering” and “Which the pastel girth of the day has assigned to me” though it’s still as puzzling as ever, yet something I accepted, as the “wings of the secret never to be known.” I mean sure, okay, as long as we’re flying there.
And we do.
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“Remembering to forgive. Remember to pass beyond you into the day” Recalling Janus now as old Rome’s marker between wartime and peacetime.
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Colors. I was thinking that the poem could be referring to things other than poetry (prosaic things perhaps, following the Dickinson exploration), the other things that preoccupy us. Colors might mean visual enticements. Might also mean allegiances, as in flags.
It hums well with the play of light throughout the poem, and the room with all those weirdly oriented chairs. Makes me think of the stained-glass that adorn cathedrals.
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Props to versatility. He has very short ones too (found a handful), gems of wit and whimsy. That compare and contrast thread sounds like a good idea, but then I don’t think you’re capable of a bad idea. Ashbery’s curated by deft, able hands in these halls.
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Today’s rereading of the poem, along with your comments, yield me a sense of contentment. To feel the presence of something deeper and unsayable, but also to be at peace with the fact that you'll never ever know, never ever see.
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Perfect! And Gillig does mash-ups. Thanks!
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Your comment on Ashbery’s plural “you” takes me back to Whitman’s large, multitudes-I.
“A Blessing in Disguise” seems a direct response to “Song of Myself”. The title of one can be written over the other, blessing-as-song / song-as-blessing (an understanding of the Whitmanian project: generous offering, promise of plenitude, illumination), self-as-disguise, disguise-as-self (a re-appreciation of “the persona” or masked-I that Whitman overtly wished to strike against, strike off, trying to eliminate the you/I distinction—resulting however, or perhaps it was Whitman’s design all along—in increasing I/I distinctions, creating a great many selves that “contradict myself”).
I found some references to grass (the image elected to serve for/as Whitman’s conceit). Following the light downward “inflicted on the stone and paths, the real trees / That seem to shine at me toward you” I see “you” as the grass.
“The pastel girth of the day,” the sun's halo or its effect, which for the I seems to be illumination but for the you, age and decay, as in the beauty of leaves of grass wilting, "“all golden and pale”.
So perhaps our Ashbery has found a way (or ways, or guises, or poetics) toward Whitman as one who “most honors” him, one “who learns under it to destroy the teacher.”
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Hi. The lines were from Whitman’s “Song of Myself”:
I am the teacher of athletes,
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own,
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
A really strong passage regarding influence. He’s making a contest out of it. Even if one of his athletes (Ginsberg, Ashbery, Pessoa, Pound) were to best Whitman, their feat would only serve to prove the worth of their teacher.
Ashbery asserts himself, registers “despair and isolation,” but also (I think) expresses his gratitude, singing and dancing his “I” to show how much he had learned.
—
Thanks for the opportunity you opened. When the Buddha was quoted, I remembered Freud’s reflection on Oedipus where a young man’s passage into manhood was seen as an elaborate rite of killing his father. The father’s shadow threatens the growth of the boy, a sense I get from these lines:
And right. The great spruces loom.
I am yours to die with, to desire.
—
Yes, that whole (grand!) Greek business of sons killing fathers, fathers eating sons. If only an opt-out were possible. Maybe JA was attempting something like that here.
—
—
—
—
—
—
I don’t wish to reduce Ashbery to Whitman (as Whitman already seems ever eager to absorb everything into Whitman), but let me see how far I get reading with everyone here taking WW as my slant of light.
(Which is just my way of saying please don't get too annoyed.)
So perhaps “they” here refers to grass, all the colors they wear through the various seasons (JA: “golden and pale”) but also all the colors they absorb by way of earth and decay (WW: “among black folks as among white, Canuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff...”). Therefore, “they” might echo all those multitudes within Whitman large I.
JA's second line seems an assertion of itself (of the poem) “But I, in my soul, am alive too.” When WW says “I loafe and invite my soul,” he’s inviting the reader, but the reader who has at least partially accepted being of or with WW’s “I”. But while JA seems willing to loafe (even fly), he also wishes to retain his self, his soul.
This, in spite of WW’s (forgivable) claims upon him.
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Yes and yes to you. This is happy work for me too. Glad you brought up Crane and Rimbaud. These I shall now read (with amatory Martory) alongside our JA.
—
—
—
Let’s keep knotted kisses to ourselves for a long time
Until another day erases
The trace of each passing.
Hello, Martory! Glad to make your acquaintance.
—
Yes, and more:
the clear distances of the city the factories without smoke
bathed as at their birth stammered
a trial hello
that only ended however
in this word round as a doubloon
placed on the edge of that day
by a considerate friend
the sun on your arms naked against my cheeks
Thanks!
—
Yes, we found a lot here that could also go to the context/culture thread The many accents of his French connection, JA’s friendships, his translation work. I also found a link or two here from you and Jon for those who’d like to read more articles about him.
—
A good new image to work with. Perhaps the learning to be done’s waiting outside?
—
Snake in the garden? I like your point about his phrases too, stuff like
Yes,
You see,
or suspected, perhaps
And right.
And I wonder how essential they are to his poems. These seem like the kind of phrases you’ll be asked to cut out in poetry workshops. But they contribute to a tentativeness, a sense of the open path, we can walk whichever way our feet might lead us.
—
—
—
Delicious. And I hope that my last thought before the first night of this new year will be an imagination of these mighty, unperceived trees.
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
Mention was made of isolation and despair. Those could be the trials we’re looking for. Or those could be consequences of those trials.
Backtracking to the Greeks, we have Prometheus presenting two packages to the gods. These were proposals, two prototypes, one of which would decide the type sacrifices man would thereafter be required to burn to earn divine favor (ie, blessings). Wiki has it:
Prometheus slew a large ox, and divided it into two piles. In one pile he put all the meat and most of the fat, skillfully covering it with the ox’s grotesque stomach, while in the other pile, he dressed up the bones artfully with shining fat. Prometheus then invited Zeus to choose; Zeus chose the pile of bones.
Blessing in disguise here could be the nourishing meat secured in the “grotesque stomach,” which could be a way of looking at the human lot. Or, at poetry as a thing to be unwrapped, laid bare, consumed.
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
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A take on the question of intent, though I don’t think it’ll be answering any of the questions above except for “What do you think?”
Attracted to poets who are concerned with opening their work, making sure it is intrinsically many things for many people and many things also for one very studious reader. Maybe because this poet is in touch with the fact that the making of a thing (poem, Nobel’s dynamite, rice cake, treatise) does not arise from only one cause but from many, that the process perhaps partakes from even her smallest desire, her secret anxiety.
This is what I love about Dickinson and Stein, Niedecker and Perelman. If, at the outset, the intent is for a poem to mean in many directions, then we’re cool. A poet might very well react to a reader’s surprising (brain-beyond-the-groove) reading with lines like Ashbery’s:
You hold me up to the light in a way
I should never have expected, or suspected, perhaps
Most of the writers I know are prosaic in the sense that the work must mean one thing (often referred to as “the main idea”), must get us to the point in the shortest, most memorable route possible, and yes, it’s an indispensable way of composing. It runs industries, assembles the broiler, constitutes nations, etc. But it would be impoverishment were that the only way to do poetry.
For writers like that, one-track and fabulously so, I try to honor them by getting their intent and nodding my head repeatedly. But for others like Ashbery, I can really just walk around. That’s his gift. I could try to get his intent without that having to be the point, like a game of chess in the context of a wide-open afternoon, so winning is not the thing, the sunset is.
Even when Ashbery tries to explain a poem of his, he words it carefully so that it sounds as if he’s just one reader of the poem (just so happens he’s also the writer). He just got to the poem before everybody else, but we can all have a look-see. And it’s poems like his “These Lacustrine Cities” and “A Blessing in Disguise” (charged with the writer's intent, but welcoming of the reader’s intent and—paraphrasing you in the webcast—moment and temperament) that make possible such northern lightly, quantum physical, mystically humming threads as these.
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Nob 2, 2014
Pandan Scarecrow
Night had begun parading its tinier sounds, all of them, save for ache and water, and other people. The gecko hinted at the repeat of rain, would not commit however. How was lunch with him around? Close: toys strung up, the mess I will miss, that one smelly mask. The youngest fears it, wondering maybe what had been done wrong, or how to earn a father less given to pranks. If a fork drops in the forest and nothing is wounded, are we still hungry? How about being in it, little one, the inside of its lips on the outside of yours, the taste of various milk teeth? How suddenly we burped into song. Hinting, again. We’ve come a long way from the typewriter . . . but coming now, down to your feet, down to tracing these bones of your feet.
Okt 28, 2014
Notes on Erica Baum's "Card Catalogues"
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D— Or, how it is the thing they could all wear? It's a usual scene in movies, those mornings after, the boy waking up to a girl wearing his shirt. It's quickly becoming a common emblem of entering an other self, as an identity, perhaps as a gender. Getting under someone's skin.
Also: while we wear the shoes of an elder or superior or someone who came (and went) before (wear my father's shoes), we wear a shirt of a peer, an equal (of sorts), a beloved / drinking buddy needing a change of clothes after a replay night of beer and puke.
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A— in love with this idea. these but surface differences (or could be regarded as such), never so deeply ingrained as we suppose. at the same time . . . the fear of pulling from our buildings naked
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A— had this to think of while looking at the particular photo
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D— Yes. Viewing them in terms of the roles of our gendered selves in relationships,or how relationships gender us, provide us with the role to play (as had already been pointed out). A costume.
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A— wish to say yes to, underline, and italicize this
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Okt 24, 2012
BENEVOLENT ASSIMILATION: Mga gupit at saling-Google mula sa ilang napapanahong makata
CRANE 1871—1900
Oo, mayroon akong isang libong wika,
Kahit na ako ay nagsusumikap upang gamitin ang isa,
Ngunit patay sa aking bibig.
McKINLEY 1843—1901
Ang pagkawasak ng Spanish fleet sa daungan ng Manila sa pamamagitan ng
Panghuli, dapat ito ang maalab wish
Islands sa ilalim ng libreng bandila ng Estados Unidos.
LOWELL 1874—1925
Pininturahan ko ang isang larawan ng isang ghost
Ang mga tao ay magyumukyok
Swimming sa mga ulap.
FREYTAG-LORINGHOVEN 1874—1927
Walang spinsterlollypop para sa akin - oo - mayroon kami
Ito ay sa France - ang hangin sa linya -
Isang dosenang cocktail - mangyaring -- -- -- --
ROBINSON 1869—1935
Tuwing Richard Cory ay nagpunta down na bayan,
Upang gumawa ng sa amin nais na kami sa kanyang lugar.
Nagpunta tahanan at maglagay ng bullet sa pamamagitan ng kanyang ulo.
STEIN 1874—1946
Ano ang kasalukuyang na gumagawa ng makinarya, na ginagawang kaluskos ito,
Ano ang kasalukuyang.
Line A Tinutukoy lamang ito.
STEVENS 1879—1946
Ang mga bahay ay pinagmumultuhan
Upang managinip ng mga baboons at periwinkles.
Sa pulang panahon.
DOOLITTLE 1886—1961
Rose, malupit rosas,
sa malulutong na buhangin
hardened sa isang dahon?
FROST 1874—1963
Isang bagay na may na hindi ibigin ng pader,
Mayroon kaming gumamit ng spell upang gawing balanse:
Sabi niya muli, "Magandang fences gumawa ng magandang kapitbahay."
WILLIAMS 1883—1963
sa likod pakpak
ay lalaki kasinungalingan
bote
ELIOT 1888—1965
I
Abril ang cruellest na buwan, dumarami
Ang ginang ng bansa ng mga sitwasyon.
Sa iyo! mapagpaimbabaw lecteur!-Lun semblable,-Lun Frere! "
II
Ang upuan siya nakaupo sa, tulad ng burnished trono,
Makikita niya gusto mong malaman kung ano ang iyong na pera na ibinigay niya sa iyo
Magandang gabi, mga kababaihan, magandang gabi, matamis ladies, magandang gabi, magandang gabi.
III
Tent ang ilog ay nasira: ang huling daliri ng dahon
Saan fishmen Lounge sa tanghali: kung saan ang mga pader
nasusunog
IV
Phlebas ang Phoenician, isang labing-apat na araw patay,
At profit at pagkawala.
Isaalang-alang ang Phlebas, na ay sabay-sabay na guwapo at matangkad habang ikaw.
V
Matapos ang tanglaw-liwanag na pula sa pawisan mukha
O sa mga alaala na draped sa pamamagitan ng spider ang mabait
Shantih shantih shantih
POUND 1885—1972
O henerasyon ng lubusan hambog
Nakita ko ang kanilang mga smiles puno ng ngipin
at hindi kahit sariling damit.
MOORE 1887—1972
Ako, masyadong, hindi gusto ito: may mga bagay na mahalaga higit pa sa lahat ng
o magtangi laban ng 'Mga dokumento sa negosyo at
tunay, ikaw ay interesado sa tula.
RANSOM 1888—1974
Kaya kinuha niya sa kanya bilang anoint
Masarap na amoy, tikman, Heats at treasons:
At recited, "ay magaling."
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