The most obscure thing here is the title of the essay. You can hear without listening, but you can't listen without hearing. Two of the poems cited -- "Mottled Tuesday" and "Anticipated Stranger" -- I think may be said to be "about" death, and death also figures in the lines from "Boundary Issues."
Poetry cannot be read as if it were prose. And it is true that the sound of Ashbery's verse is its lure. Hook onto that and eventually meanings emerge, multiple meanings, kaleidoscopically.
No comments:
Post a Comment