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Saturday, December 4, 2004 |
For the Ashbery fans out there (I know not many read this blog, but there's a few of you):
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Have you ever met another Ashbery fan and spent several excited minutes quoting his poems in unison? Have you ever seen anyone else do this?
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Have you ever been reading a book by Ashbery and had some poem just stop you until you'd shared it with someone else? Which poem?
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Have you ever wept or laughed so much while reading Ashbery that a stranger asked you what you were reading?
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Have you ever missed a meal or lost sleep because of a book by Ashbery? Which one?
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Have you ever been so affected by an Ashbery poem that you wanted to learn it by heart before you did anything else? Did you learn it?
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Can you recite any Ashbery poem in its entirety?
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Can you recite the opening lines from your favorite poem by Ashbery?
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Can you recite five consecutive lines from any Ashbery poem? One line?
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Have you ever woken up at three in the morning compelled to reread some particular Ashbery poem? Which one?
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When you meet another Ashbery fan do you talk about particular poems? Which ones? At what level of detail?
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Without looking them up, can you name five poems (title poems don't count) from your favorite book by Ashbery?
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If you answered "no" to as many as half of the above questions,
please tell me just how a fan of Ashbery please let me know just how his poetry does affect you.
I really want to know.
Update, 12/06/04: I've reworded the last question, which was not meant to seem combative. Thank you for all the great responses, in comments and by email. Please keep them coming.
6:28:36 PM 
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Were I to believe my two-plus years of referrer logs, I'd say the three most popular poems in English are Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer," Richard Wilbur's "Mind," and Julia Alvarez's "Woman's Work." Alternatively, they are the three most puzzling poems in English, or they are the three poems most likely to be on the reading list of an introductory course on American poetry.
A fourth theory supported by the evidence at hand is that, simply because I have once or twice mentioned them, I am considered by Google to be among the world's foremost authorities on these three poems.
10:29:26 AM
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
2006 Michael Snider.
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