A Wave Read online

  A Wave

  Poems

  John Ashbery

  Contents

  Publisher’s Note

  At North Farm

  Rain Moving In

  The Songs We Know Best

  When the Sun Went Down

  Landscape (After Baudelaire)

  Just Walking Around

  A Fly

  The Ongoing Story

  Thank You For Not Cooperating

  But What Is the Reader To Make of This?

  Down by the Station, Early in the Morning

  Around the Rough and Rugged Rocks the Ragged Rascal Rudely Ran

  More Pleasant Adventures

  Purists Will Object

  Description of a Masque

  The Path to the White Moon

  Ditto, Kiddo

  Introduction

  I See, Said the Blind Man, as He Put Down His Hammer and Saw

  Edition Peters, Leipzig

  37 Haiku

  Haibun

  Haibun 2

  Haibun 3

  Haibun 4

  Haibun 5

  Haibun 6

  Variation on a Noel

  Staffage

  The Lonedale Operator

  Proust’s Questionnaire

  Cups with Broken Handles

  Just Someone You Say Hi To

  They Like

  So Many Lives

  Never Seek to Tell Thy Love

  Darlene’s Hospital

  Destiny Waltz

  Try Me! I’m Different!

  One of the Most Extraordinary Things in Life

  Whatever It Is, Wherever You Are

  Trefoil

  Problems

  A Wave

  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.

  At North Farm

  Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,

  At incredible speed, traveling day and night,

  Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.

  But will he know where to find you,

  Recognize you when he sees you,

  Give you the thing he has for you?

  Hardly anything grows here,

  Yet the granaries are bursting with meal,

  The sacks of meal piled to the rafters.

  The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish;

  Birds darken the sky. Is it enough

  That the dish of milk is set out at night,

  That we think of him
sometimes,

  Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?

  Rain Moving In

  The blackboard is erased in the attic

  And the wind turns up the light of the stars,

  Sinewy now. Someone will find out, someone will know.

  And if somewhere on this great planet

  The truth is discovered, a patch of it, dried, glazed by the sun,

  It will just hang on, in its own infamy, humility. No one

  Will be better for it, but things can’t get any worse.

  Just keep playing, mastering as you do the step

  Into disorder this one meant. Don’t you see

  It’s all we can do? Meanwhile, great fires

  Arise, as of haystacks aflame. The dial has been set

  And that’s ominous, but all your graciousness in living

  Conspires with it, now that this is our home:

  A place to be from, and have people ask about.

  The Songs We Know Best

  Just like a shadow in an empty room

  Like a breeze that’s pointed from beyond the tomb

  Just like a project of which no one tells—

  Or didja really think that I was somebody else?

  Your clothes and pantlegs lookin’ out of shape

  Shape of the body over which they drape

  Body which has acted in so many scenes

  But didja ever think of what that body means?

  It is an organ and a vice to some

  A necessary evil which we all must shun

  To others an abstraction and a piece of meat

  But when you’re looking out you’re in the driver’s seat!

  No man cares little about fleshly things

  They fill him with a silence that spreads in rings

  We wish to know more but we are never sated

  No wonder some folks think the flesh is overrated!

  The things we know now all got learned in school

  Try to learn a new thing and you break the rule

  Our knowledge isn’t much it’s just a small amount

  But you feel it quick inside you when you’re down for the count

  You look at me and frown like I was out of place

  I guess I never did much for the human race

  Just hatched some schemes on paper that looked good at first

  Sat around and watched until the bubble burst

  And now you’re lookin’ good all up and down the line

  Except for one thing you still have in mind

  It’s always there though often with a different face

  It’s the worm inside the jumping bean that makes it race

  Too often when you thought you’d be showered with confetti

  What they flung at you was a plate of hot spaghetti

  You’ve put your fancy clothes and flashy gems in hock

  Yet you pause before your father’s door afraid to knock

  Once you knew the truth it tried to set you free

  And still you stood transfixed just like an apple tree

  The truth it came and went and left you in the lurch

  And now you think you see it from your lofty perch

  The others come and go they’re just a dime a dozen

  You react to them no more than to a distant cousin

  Only a few people can touch your heart

  And they too it seems have all gotten a false start

  In twilight the city with its hills shines serene

  And lets you make of it more than anything could mean

  It’s the same city by day that seems so crude and calm

  You’ll have to get to know it not just pump its arm

  Even when that bugle sounded loud and clear

  You knew it put an end to all your fear

  To all that lying and the senseless mistakes

  And now you’ve got it right and you know what it takes

  Someday I’ll look you up when we’re both old and gray

  And talk about those times we had so far away

  How much it mattered then and how it matters still

  Only things look so different when you’ve got a will

  It’s true that out of this misunderstanding could end

  And men would greet each other like they’d found a friend

  With lots of friends around there’s no one to entice

  And don’t you think seduction isn’t very nice?

  It carries in this room against the painted wall

  And hangs in folds of curtains when it’s not there at all

  It’s woven in the flowers of the patterned spread

  And lies and knows not what it thinks upon the bed

  I wish to come to know you get to know you all

  Let your belief in me and me in you stand tall

  Just like a project of which no one tells—

  Or do ya still think that I’m somebody else?

  When the Sun Went Down

  To have been loved once by someone—surely

  There is a permanent good in that,

  Even if we don’t know all the circumstances

  Or it happened too long ago to make any difference.

  Like almost too much sunlight or an abundance of sweet-sticky,

  Caramelized things—who can tell you it’s wrong?

  Which of the others on your team could darken the passive

  Melody that runs on, that has been running since the world began?

  Yet, to be strapped to one’s mindset, which seems

  As enormous as a plain, to have to be told

  That its horizons are comically confining,

  And all the sorrow wells from there, like the slanting

  Plume of a waterspout: doesn’t it supplant knowledge

  Of the different forms of love, reducing them

  To a white indifferent prism, a roofless love standing open

  To the elements? And some see in this a paradigm of how it rises

  Slowly to the indifferent heavens, all that pale glamour?

  The refrain is desultory as birdsong; it seeps unrecognizably

  Into the familiar structures that lead out from here

  To the still familiar peripheries and less sure notions:

  It already had its way. In time for evening relaxation.

  There are times when music steals a march on us,

  Is suddenly perplexingly nearer, flowing in my wrist;

  Is the true and dirty words you whisper nightly

  As the book closes like a collapsing sheet, a blur

  Of all kinds of connotations ripped from the hour and tossed

  Like jewels down a well; the answer, also,

  To the question that was on my mind but that I’ve forgotten,

  Except in the way certain things, certain nights, come together.

  Landscape

  (After Baudelaire)

  I want a bedroom near the sky, an astrologer’s cave

  Where I can fashion eclogues that are chaste and grave.

  Dreaming, I’ll hear the wind in the steeples close by

  Sweep the solemn hymns away. I’ll spy

  On factories from my attic window, resting my chin

  In both hands, drinking in the songs, the din.

  I’ll see chimneys and steeples, those masts of the city,

  And the huge sky that makes us dream of eternity.

  How sweet to watch the birth of the star in the still-blue

  Sky, through mist; the lamp burning anew

  At the window; rivers of coal climbing the firmament

  And the moon pouring out its pale enchantment.

  I’ll see the spring, the summer and the fall

  And when winter casts its monotonous pall

  Of snow, I’ll draw the blinds and curtains tight

  And build my magic palaces in the night;

  Then dream of gardens, of bluish horizons,

  Of jets of water weeping in alabaster basins,


  Of kisses, of birds singing at dawn and at nightfall,

  Of all that’s most childish in our pastoral.

  When the storm rattles my windowpane

  I’ll stay hunched at my desk, it will roar in vain

  For I’ll have plunged deep inside the thrill

  Of conjuring spring with the force of my will,

  Coaxing the sun from my heart, and building here

  Out of my fiery thoughts, a tepid atmosphere.

  Just Walking Around

  What name do I have for you?

  Certainly there is no name for you

  In the sense that the stars have names

  That somehow fit them. Just walking around,

  An object of curiosity to some,

  But you are too preoccupied

  By the secret smudge in the back of your soul

  To say much, and wander around,

  Smiling to yourself and others.

  It gets to be kind of lonely

  But at the same time off-putting,

  Counterproductive, as you realize once again

  That the longest way is the most efficient way,

  The one that looped among islands, and

  You always seemed to be traveling in a circle.

  And now that the end is near

  The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.

  There is light in there, and mystery and food.

  Come see it. Come not for me but it.

  But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other.

  A Fly

  And still I automatically look to that place on the wall—

  The timing is right, but off—

  The approval soured—

  That’s what comes of age but not aging,

  The marbles all snapped into the side pockets,

  The stance for today we know full well is

  Yesterday’s delivery and ripe prediction—

  The way not to hold in when circling,

  As a delighted draughtsman sits down to his board.

  Reasons, reasons for this:

  The enthusiast mopping through his hair again

  As he squats on the toilet and catches one eye in the mirror

  (Guys it has come through all right

  For once as delivered it’s all here and me with time on my hands