Notes on John Ashbery’s “Variant”

Sometimes a word will start it, like
Hands and feet, sun and gloves. The way
Is fraught with danger, you say, and I
Notice the word “fraught” as you are telling
Me about huge secret valleys some distance from
The mired fighting—“but always, lightly wooded
As they are, more deeply involved with the outcome
That will someday paste a black, bleeding label
In the sky, but until then
The echo, flowering freely in corridors, alleys,
And tame, surprised places far from anywhere,
Will be automatically locked out – vox
Clamans – do you see? End of tomorrow.
Don’t try to start the car or look deeper
Into the eternal wimpling of the sky: luster
On luster, transparency floated onto the topmost layer
Until the whole thing overflows like a silver
Wedding cake or Christmas tree, in a cascade of tears.”

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[ Sweatshirt Poesy ]

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Really missing the old platform. It’s really as simple as NOT imposing paragraph spacing (which we can do by ourselves, thank you very much). Was trying to replace these s and
s with
s too, but was unsuccessful.

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Hello to you both. I’ve been thinking of "wimpling" and how it seemed to me an Oulipian V+7 variant of what would’ve been a trite "eternal weeping of the sky." Took a longer at the wimple and it took me to church, and then to something earlier, Magdalene before the empty cave where Jesus had been sneakily buried. A lot of poem now echoes the Bible for me, from the first line where the beginning is the word, and all the way to Christmas. Hands and feet, sun and gloves (and that enjambment at "wooded") carry shades of Golgotha with its armed Romans and the final rite.

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Not sure why he’s not "laying down the law," but maybe he is, you know, precisely by not doing so, because you can’t lay the law that way any more.

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Finding this true. And there are contrasts between lightness and weight (maybe also, light and darkness) if the lines are suspended from each other. On the one hand, the hands and feet, sun and gloves line, the "lightly wooded" line, luster on luster, cake, while on the other we have your bleeding line (smoke? ink?) and the mired fighting.

I hesitate to include cascade of tears and the flowering echo in either "camp" as they seem to me images where the values are blended.

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It seems very light at the outset for me, first couple of lines, a word, hands and feet, it’s going, it’s going. Then yes, as had been mentioned above (many times, many ways), that syllable heavy (fraught) with history and meaning and cargo and consonants. Then it becomes a sort of dance between light stuff and heavy stuff.

The "it" in the first line seems light, not carrying any noun or what, not yet anyway. What could "it" be? We’re not sure yet, we’re just getting started. Is it the car? An argument? The marriage itself? The poem or poetry as a way of life? The cosmos? Interiority (as an echo flowering freely in corridors...)

Soon it’s clear (or not) that it might carry all of the above and more, it’s fraught, and every meaning we put into it is imperiled or itself a peril. So perhaps, don’t try to start it! Don’t carry it across (see metaphor’s etymology).

My favorite part here’s the sixth line, because that’s where I kind of lets it out, staccato, pitching back to you everything you said.

How did it come to this? Thus far, fraught has been said by you (original), but not directly quoted so this word came to us via I (first variant), who also returns the word to you, highlighted and quote-marked (second variant).

Even in a simple conversation, without paraphrasing anything, just an exchange of one word, we get a terrifying weight of possible meaning and misinterpretation. There’s possible accusation, a correction might be made in a while (excuse me, did I just hear you say fraught?), and then come the repercussions, cascading, cascading.

And the form, wow. So there’s that quoted "fraught" up there, the star up the tree, followed by an overflow of other things you said "but always, lightly wooded... cascade of tears."

I suddenly decides to return a chunk of what's been said by you, including not-starting. They are indeed mired in all this: looking deeper at (closely reading?) everything including not-looking-deeper.

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Drawn to this image of the ruined cake, cascading as tears. Story of a failed marriage (or are those tears of joy), or someone’s watching home videos year after "home" has collapsed from the frame.

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