… Here it
Seems to grow lighter with each passing century.
No matter how you twist it, life stays frozen in the headlights.
Funny, none of us heard the roar.

from John Ashbery’s “Wakefulness”.

Before this becomes last year’s news: Ashbery is the poet laureate of MTV. Go watch snippets of Ashbery’s “snapped-off perceptions,” graphically made-up for the kids. Is this just a sad waste of effort, somehow? Or can poets be pop icons, once again?

See also:

•“Invisible Listeners” in the New York Times.

[Ashbery] imagines no perfect unions, in life or art. Instead he stresses the otherness of others and ourselves. But the acknowledgment of otherness is itself a form of intimacy. In Ashbery we learn how to be alone together.

• “Understanding Metaphor“, an essay on Ashbery I wrote back in 2004.

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