John Ashbery

“Ashbery once said that his goal was ‘to produce a poem that the critic cannot even talk about.’… Having received nearly every major award for achievement in the humanities, he continues to incite considerable debate as to whether his poems “mean” anything at all.”

And yet and yet… We continue to annotate the significance of his poetry, the relevance of his major theme- Vagueness, and the vague ambivalence of its specificity. The professor is running into four-and-a-half lecture hours- our second week on Ashbery. And it just seems ironic, that if Ashbery were sitting in the back of 2 LeConte today, he’d be laughing hysterically and giving himself a hearty pat on the back. I find him a little insufferable, though it may mostly be due to the four-and-a-half-hour expertly tuned monotone/uninterrupted/rhapsodic Ashbery droning. Praise be to his majesty of opaque prosetry. I am on facebook.