Can You Hear, Bird: Poems Read online

  Can You Hear, Bird

  Poems

  John Ashbery

  For

  Harry Mathews

  and

  Marie Chaix

  Contents

  Publisher’s Note

  A Day at the Gate

  A New Octagon

  A Poem of Unrest

  A Waking Dream

  Abe’s Collision

  Allotted Spree

  Andante Misterioso

  Angels (you

  Anxiety and Hardwood Floors

  At First I Thought I Wouldn’t Say Anything About It

  At Liberty and Cranberry

  Atonal Music

  Awful Effects of Two Comets

  … by an Earthquake

  By Guess and by Gosh

  Can You Hear, Bird

  Cantilever

  Chapter II, Book 35

  Chronic Symbiosis

  Collected Places

  Coming Down from New York

  Dangerous Moonlight

  Debit Night

  Do Husbands Matter?

  Dull Mauve

  Eternity Sings the Blues

  Fascicle

  Five O’Clock Shadow

  From the Observatory

  Fuckin’ Sarcophagi

  Getting Back In

  Gladys Palmer

  Heavenly Arts Polka

  Hegel

  I Saw No Need

  I, Too

  In an Inchoate Place

  In Old Oklahoma

  Like a Sentence

  Limited Liability

  Love in Boots

  Love’s Stratagem

  Many Are Dissatisfied

  Military Pastoral

  My Name Is Dimitri

  My Philosophy of Life

  Nice Morning Blues

  No Earthly Reason

  No Longer Very Clear

  Obedience School

  Ode to John Keats

  Of a Particular Stranger

  Operators Are Standing By

  Others Shied Away

  Palindrome

  Penthesilea

  Plain as Day

  Point Lookout

  Poor Knights of Windsor

  Quick Question

  Reverie and Caprice

  Safe Conduct

  Salon de Thé

  See How You Like My Shoes

  Sleepers Awake

  Something Too Chinese

  Swaying, the Apt Traveler Exited My House

  Taxi in the Glen

  The Blot People

  The Captive Sense

  The Confronters

  The Desolate Beauty Parlor on Beach Avenue

  The Faint of Heart

  The Green Mummies

  The Latvian

  The Military Base

  The Peace Plan

  The Penitent

  The Problem of Anxiety

  The Sea

  The Shocker

  The Waiting Ceremony

  The Walkways

  The Water Carrier

  Theme

  Three Dusks

  Today’s Academicians

  Touching, the Similarities

  Tower of Darkness

  Tremendous Outpouring

  Tuesday Evening

  Twilight Park

  Umpteen

  What the Plants Say

  When All Her Neighbors Came

  Where It Was Decided We Should Be Taken

  Woman Leaning

  Yes, Dr. Grenzmer. How May I Be of Assistance to You? What! You Say the Patient Has Escaped?

  Yesterday, for Instance

  You Dropped Something

  You, My Academy

  You Would Have Thought

  Young People

  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 suc
h 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.

  A Day at the Gate

  A loose and dispiriting

  wind took over from the grinding of traffic.

  Clouds from the distillery

  blotted out the sky. Ocarina sales plummeted.

  Believe you me it was a situation

  Aladdin’s lamp might have ameliorated. And where was I?

  Among architecture, magazines, recycled fish,

  waiting for the wear and tear

  to show up on my chart. Good luck,

  bonne chance. Remember me to the zithers

  and their friends, the ondes martenot.

  Only I say: What comes this way withers

  automatically. And the fog, drastically.

  As one mercurial teardrop glozes

  an empire’s classified documents, so

  other softnesses decline the angles

  of the waiting. Tall, pissed-off,

  dressed in this day’s clothes,

  holding its umbrella, he half turned away

  with a shooshing sound. Said he needed us.

  Said the sky shall be kelly green tonight.

  A New Octagon

  Over a cup of flaming tea, the ogre assessed

  my chances. Nothing in this blue vault belongs

  where you put it; therefore are you the dupe

  of its nonchalance. Try to wriggle free, remembering

  what the great collector said: Serenity is a mild bridle

  lending dignity to any occasion. The best truss

  is the severest, but your village

  ends where mine begins. Angry little houses litigate;

  the roof leaks. Present your wrist for stamping

  as you go out into the northwestern territories, otherwise

  we’ll see whose absence becomes it.

  Daughters Tiffany and Brittany concurred. There

  isn’t much in the way of agony impeding the astral

  path you seek. On with the

  ways and

  the variance sequestered by others.

  A Poem of Unrest

  Men duly understand the river of life,

  misconstruing it, as it widens and its cities grow

  dark and denser, always farther away.

  And of course that remote denseness suits

  us, as lambs and clover might have

  if things had been built to order differently.

  But since I don’t understand myself, only segments

  of myself that misunderstand each other, there’s no

  reason for you to want to, no way you could

  even if we both wanted it. Do those towers even exist?

  We must look at it that way, along those lines

  so the thought can erect itself, like plywood battlements.

  A Waking Dream

  And the failing panopticon? That happened before,

  when my uncle was in his bathrobe, on vacation.

  Leastways, folks said it was a vacation …

  Are you referring to your Uncle Obadiah,

  the one that spent twenty years in the drunk-tank

  and could whistle all the latest hits when sprung?

  No one ever cared to talk much about it, it seemed a little too

  peculiar, and he, he had forgotten the art

  of knowing how far to go too far.

  Just so. When driven, he would materialize in a Palm Beach suit

  and Panama hat with tiny rainbow holes in it.

  That was someone who knew how to keep up appearances

  until he had exhausted them. Some of the railroad crew

  got to know him at times, and could never figure out how he knew

  exactly when a storm would hit. And when its anthracitic orgasm

  erupted, we were out in the salley gardens mending coils

  from the last big one. Such is my recollection. And vipers

  would pause to notice. Meanwhile he was acting more and more

  like a candidate. Then the wave of beach chairs crashed over us

  and there was nothing more to be said for it. The case was closed,

  it was “history,” he liked to say, as though that were a topic

  he could expand on if he chose, but it was more likely

  to be night, and no one could extricate it properly.

  Yet I had been told of an estimate.

  That’s what we don’t know! If only I could get my senses

  back in the right order, and had time to ponder this old message,

  I could have the sluice-gates opened in a jiffy. As it is,

  they’re probably more than a little rusty, and do we know,

  really know, as chasm-dwellers are said

  to know, which way is upstream?

  Abe’s Collision

  So much energy deployed

  in circumnavigating the seer’s collisions!

  Don’t do it yet,

  it hasn’t happened.

  There is something in it.

  And if we were a guidepost,

  life would come along one day,

  verify its balance, then leave

  straight into the flustered ballooning of branches,

  hands on the long ramp

  leading to the restaurant with its coffee.

  Sure, it’s time we merged.

  There are no others to do it

  for us, we think we’re nice.

  That’s why we’ve got to do it.

  It takes balls to do it

  and a heavy-duty sucker across the way.

  A snake will unplug the drain.

  The slate will light up and read itself.

  Allotted Spree

  How the past filled its designated space

  with every kind of drollery, so there

  were not just the things one knew about.

  It’s the secret of my gospel, it can never

  be gone for too long or get too fancy.

  Everybody wants to own a share in it!

  This, too, is impossible.

  I saw a woman in red move, come out from behind the brush.

  I saw ten milky-white puppy dogs who chanted at me:

  “You’re a handful.” I saw the spire of St. Diana’s

  prick and light up the sky. Those were gnashed doldrums.

  Down where the last coitus happened,

  another, a new madman in a cloak and hat,

  was rising with the moon. They don’t let you off

  for these little things. Try imagining it.

  Yes but against the sofa of your captivating lens

  your appetites are wizard, dear. Le
t’s give them all

  a chance. On to the starboard

  list of the apartment, to the gemstone-crusted tankard.

  Andante Misterioso

  The perfume climbs into my tree.

  It is given to red-haired sprites:

  words that music expresses

  almost amply.

  The symphony at the station

  then, and all over people trying to hear it

  and others trying to get away. A “trying”

  situation, perhaps, yet no one is worse off than before.

  Horses slog through dirt—hell,

  it’s normal for ’em.

  And that summer cottage we rented once—remember

  how the bugs came in through the screens, and

  all was not as it was supposed to be?

  Nowadays people have cars for things like that,

  to carry them away, I mean,

  I suppose.

  And wherever man sets his giant foot

  petals spring up, and artificial torsos,

  dressmakers’ dummies. And an ancient photograph

  and an ancient phonograph, that carols

  in mist. Pardon. The landlord locked us out.

  Angels (you

  know who you are), come back

  when you’ve aged a little, when the outdoors

  is an attractive curiosity no longer.

  Don’t get me wrong, I like your waving

  turquoise mittens extantly. I must polish

  my speech, having spent a life

  watching old Steffi Duna movies, and being warned

  about the consequences. It seems I should pass;

  there’s only one essay question, and it can be about anything

  you like. Yet I hesitate, like a spermatozoid

  that’s lost its way and doesn’t dare ask directions—

  they’d club it if it did. Once you’re en route

  it doesn’t matter if you know, besides, anyway.

  Conversely the winter circuit closes down

  until some time in spring, but more likely forever.

  Signs of rot and corruption are everywhere

  and are even copied by the fashion-conscious.

  I must sugar my hair. And my factotum?

  You said there was one more in your party.

  No one is in a hurry.

  Suddenly the day is crocus-sweet.