Houseboat Days: Poems Read online

  Houseboat Days

  Poems

  John Ashbery

  Contents

  Publisher’s Note

  Street Musicians

  The Other Tradition

  Variant

  Collective Dawns

  Wooden Buildings

  Pyrography

  The Gazing Grain

  Unctuous Platitudes

  The Couple in the Next Room

  The Explanation

  Loving Mad Tom

  Business Personals

  Crazy Weather

  On the Towpath

  Melodic Trains

  Bird’s-Eye View of the Tool and Die Co.

  Wet Casements

  Saying It to Keep It from Happening

  Daffy Duck in Hollywood

  All Kinds of Caresses

  Lost and Found and Lost Again

  Two Deaths

  Houseboat Days

  Whether It Exists

  The Lament upon the Waters

  Drame Bourgeois

  And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name

  What Is Poetry

  And Others, Vaguer Presences

  The Wrong Kind of Insurance

  The Serious Doll

  Friends

  The Thief of Poetry

  The Ice-Cream Wars

  Valentine

  Blue Sonata

  Spring Light

  Syringa

  Fantasia on “The Nut-Brown Maid”

  About the Author

  Publisher’s Note

  Long before they were ever written down, poems were organized in lines. Since the invention of the printing press, readers have become increasingly conscious of looking at poems, rather than hearing them, but the function of the poetic line remains primarily sonic. Whether a poem is written in meter or in free verse, the lines introduce some kind of pattern into the ongoing syntax of the poem’s sentences; the lines make us experience those sentences differently. Reading a prose poem, we feel the strategic absence of line.

  But precisely because we’ve become so used to looking at poems, the function of line can be hard to describe. As James Longenbach writes in The Art of the Poetic Line, “Line has no identity except in relation to other elements in the poem, especially the syntax of the poem’s sentences. It is not an abstract concept, and its qualities cannot be described generally or schematically. It cannot be associated reliably with the way we speak or breathe. Nor can its function be understood merely from its visual appearance on the page.” Printed books altered our relationship to poetry by allowing us to see the lines more readily. What new challenges do electronic reading devices pose?

  In a printed book, the width of the page and the size of the type are fixed. Usually, because the page is wide enough and the type small enough, a line of poetry fits comfortably on the page: What you see is what you’re supposed to hear as a unit of sound. Sometimes, however, a long line may exceed the width of the page; the line continues, indented just below the beginning of the line. Readers of printed books have become accustomed to this convention, even if it may on some occasions seem ambiguous—particularly when some of the lines of a poem are already indented from the left-hand margin of the page.

  But unlike a printed book, which is stable, an ebook is a shape-shifter. Electronic type may be reflowed across a galaxy of applications and interfaces, across a variety of screens, from phone to tablet to computer. And because the reader of an ebook is empowered to change the size of the type, a poem’s original lineation may seem to be altered in many different ways. As the size of the type increases, the likelihood of any given line running over increases.

  Our typesetting standard for poetry is designed to register that when a line of poetry exceeds the width of the screen, the resulting run-over line should be indented, as it might be in a printed book. Take a look at John Ashbery’s “Disclaimer” as it appears in two different type sizes.

  Each of these versions of the poem has the same number of lines: the number that Ashbery intended. But if you look at the second, third, and fifth lines of the second stanza in the right-hand version of “Disclaimer,” you’ll see the automatic indent; in the fifth line, for instance, the word ahead drops down and is indented. The automatic indent not only makes poems easier to read electronically; it also helps to retain the rhythmic shape of the line—the unit of sound—as the poet intended it. And to preserve the integrity of the line, words are never broken or hyphenated when the line must run over. Reading “Disclaimer” on the screen, you can be sure that the phrase “you pause before the little bridge, sigh, and turn ahead” is a complete line, while the phrase “you pause before the little bridge, sigh, and turn” is not.

  Open Road has adopted an electronic typesetting standard for poetry that ensures the clearest possible marking of both line breaks and stanza breaks, while at the same time handling the built-in function for resizing and reflowing text that all ereading devices possess. The first step is the appropriate semantic markup of the text, in which the formal elements distinguishing a poem, including lines, stanzas, and degrees of indentation, are tagged. Next, a style sheet that reads these tags must be designed, so that the formal elements of the poems are always displayed consistently. For instance, the style sheet reads the tags marking lines that the author himself has indented; should that indented line exceed the character capacity of a screen, the run-over part of the line will be indented further, and all such runovers will look the same. This combination of appropriate coding choices and style sheets makes it easy to display poems with complex indentations, no matter if the lines are metered or free, end-stopped or enjambed.

  Ultimately, there may be no way to account for every single variation in the way in which the lines of a poem are disposed visually on an electronic reading device, just as rare variations may challenge the conventions of the printed page, but with rigorous quality assessment and scrupulous proofreading, nearly every poem can be set electronically in accordance with its author’s intention. And in some regards, electronic typesetting increases our capacity to transcribe a poem accurately: In a printed book, there may be no way to distinguish a stanza break from a page break, but with an ereader, one has only to resize the text in question to discover if a break at the bottom of a page is intentional or accidental.

  Our goal in bringing out poetry in fully reflowable digital editions is to honor the sanctity of line and stanza as meticulously as possible—to allow readers to feel assured that the way the lines appear on the screen is an accurate embodiment of the way the author wants the lines to sound. Ever since poems began to be written down, the manner in which they ought to be written down has seemed equivocal; ambiguities have always resulted. By taking advantage of the technologies available in our time, our goal is to deliver the most satisfying reading experience possible.

  Street Musicians

  One died, and the soul was wrenched out

  Of the other in life, who, walking the streets

  Wrapped in an identity like a coat, sees on and on

  The same corners, volumetrics, shadows

  Under trees. Farther than anyone was ever

  Called, through increasingly suburban airs

  And ways, with autumn falling over everything:

  The plush leaves the chattels in barrels

  Of an obscure family being evicted

  Into the way it was, and is. The other beached

  Glimpses of what the other was up to:

  Revelations at last. So they grew to hate and forget each other.

  So I cradle this average violin that knows

  Only forgotten showtunes, but argues

  The possibility of free declamation anchored

  To a dull refrain, th
e year turning over on itself

  In November, with the spaces among the days

  More literal, the meat more visible on the bone.

  Our question of a place of origin hangs

  Like smoke: how we picnicked in pine forests,

  In coves with the water always seeping up, and left

  Our trash, sperm and excrement everywhere, smeared

  On the landscape, to make of us what we could.

  The Other Tradition

  They all came, some wore sentiments

  Emblazoned on T-shirts, proclaiming the lateness

  Of the hour, and indeed the sun slanted its rays

  Through branches of Norfolk Island pine as though

  Politely clearing its throat, and all ideas settled

  In a fuzz of dust under trees when it’s drizzling:

  The endless games of Scrabble, the boosters,

  The celebrated omelette au Cantal, and through it

  The roar of time plunging unchecked through the sluices

  Of the days, dragging every sexual moment of it

  Past the lenses: the end of something.

  Only then did you glance up from your book,

  Unable to comprehend what had been taking place, or

  Say what you had been reading. More chairs

  Were brought, and lamps were lit, but it tells

  Nothing of how all this proceeded to materialize

  Before you and the people waiting outside and in the next

  Street, repeating its name over and over, until silence

  Moved halfway up the darkened trunks,

  And the meeting was called to order.

  I still remember

  How they found you, after a dream, in your thimble hat,

  Studious as a butterfly in a parking lot.

  The road home was nicer then. Dispersing, each of the

  Troubadours had something to say about how charity

  Had run its race and won, leaving you the ex-president

  Of the event, and how, though many of those present

  Had wished something to come of it, if only a distant

  Wisp of smoke, yet none was so deceived as to hanker

  After that cool non-being of just a few minutes before,

  Now that the idea of a forest had clamped itself

  Over the minutiae of the scene. You found this

  Charming, but turned your face fully toward night,

  Speaking into it like a megaphone, not hearing

  Or caring, although these still live and are generous

  And all ways contained, allowed to come and go

  Indefinitely in and out of the stockade

  They have so much trouble remembering, when your forgetting

  Rescues them at last, as a star absorbs the night.

  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, flowing 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.”

  Collective Dawns

  You can have whatever you want.

  Own it, I mean. In the sense

  Of twisting it to you, through long, spiralling afternoons.

  It has a sense beyond that meaning that was dropped there

  And left to rot. The glacier seems

  Impervious but is all shot through

  With amethyst and the loud, distraught notes of the cuckoo.

  They say the town is coming apart.

  And people go around with a fragment of a smile

  Missing from their faces. Life is getting cheaper

  In some senses. Over the tops of old hills

  The sunset jabs down, angled in a way it couldn’t have

  Been before. The bird-sellers walk back into it.

  “We needn’t fire their kilns; tonight is the epic

  Night of the world. Grettir is coming back to us.

  His severed hand has grabbed the short sword

  And jumped back onto his wrist. The whole man is waking up.

  The island is becoming a sun. Wait by this

  Mistletoe bush and you will get the feeling of really

  Being out of the world and with it. The sun

  Is now an inlet of freshness whose very nature

  Causes it to dry up.” The old poems

  In the book have changed value once again. Their black letter

  Fools only themselves into ignoring their stiff, formal qualities, and they move

  Insatiably out of reach of bathos and the bad line

  Into a weird ether of forgotten dismemberments. Was it

  This rosebud? Who said that?

  The time of all forgotten

  Things is at hand.

  Therefore I write you

  This bread and butter letter, you my friend

  Who saved me from the mill pond of chill doubt

  As to my own viability, and from the proud village

  Of bourgeois comfort and despair, the mirrored spectacles of grief.

  Let who can take courage from the dawn’s

  Coming up with the same idiot solution under another guise

  So that all meanings should be scrambled this way

  No matter how important they were to the men

  Coming in the future, since this is the way it has to happen

  For all things under the shrinking light to change

  And the pattern to follow them, unheeded, bargained for

  As it too is absorbed. But the guesswork

  Has been taken out of millions of nights. The gasworks

  Know it and fall to the ground, though no doom

  Says it through the long cool hours of rest

  While it sleeps as it can, as in fact it must, for the man to find himself.

  Wooden Buildings

  The tests are good. You need a million of them.

  You’d die laughing as I write to you

  Through leaves and articulations, yes, laughing

  Myself silly too. The funniest little thing …

  That’s how it all began. Looking back on it,

  I wonder now if it could have been on some day

  Findable in an old calendar? But no,

  It wasn’t out of history, but inside it.

  That’s the thing. On whatever day we came

  To a small house built just above the water,

  You had to stoop over to see inside the attic window.

  Someone had judged the height to be just right

  The way the light came in, and they are

  Giving that party, to turn on that dishwasher

  And we may be led, then, upward through more

  Powerful forms of poetry, past columns

  With peeling posters on them, to the country of indifference.

  Meanwhile if the swell diapasons, blooms

  Unhappily and too soon, the little people are nonetheless real.

  Pyrography

  Out here on Cottage Grove it matters. The galloping

  Wind balks at its shadow. The carriages

  Are drawn forward under a sky of fumed oak.

  This is America calli
ng:

  The mirroring of state to state,

  Of voice to voice on the wires,

  The force of colloquial greetings like golden

  Pollen sinking on the afternoon breeze.

  In service stairs the sweet corruption thrives;

  The page of dusk turns like a creaking revolving stage in Warren, Ohio.

  If this is the way it is let’s leave,

  They agree, and soon the slow boxcar journey begins,

  Gradually accelerating until the gyrating fans of suburbs

  Enfolding the darkness of cities are remembered

  Only as a recurring tic. And midway

  We meet the disappointed, returning ones, without its

  Being able to stop us in the headlong night

  Toward the nothing of the coast. At Bolinas

  The houses doze and seem to wonder why through the

  Pacific haze, and the dreams alternately glow and grow dull.

  Why be hanging on here? Like kites, circling,

  Slipping on a ramp of air, but always circling?

  But the variable cloudiness is pouring it on,

  Flooding back to you like the meaning of a joke.

  The land wasn’t immediately appealing; we built it

  Partly over with fake ruins, in the image of ourselves:

  An arch that terminates in mid-keystone, a crumbling stone pier

  For laundresses, an open-air theater, never completed

  And only partially designed. How are we to inhabit

  This space from which the fourth wall is invariably missing,

  As in a stage-set or dollhouse, except by staying as we are,

  In lost profile, facing the stars, with dozens of as yet

  Unrealized projects, and a strict sense

  Of time running out, of evening presenting

  The tactfully folded-over bill? And we fit

  Rather too easily into it, become transparent,

  Almost ghosts. One day

  The birds and animals in the pasture have absorbed

  The color, the density of the surroundings,

  The leaves are alive, and too heavy with life.

  A long period of adjustment followed.

  In the cities at the turn of the century they knew about it

  But were careful not to let on as the iceman and the milkman