with me; his remarks
have something playful and witty about
them, though they do not
hold together...
I'm sure they'll think we're ready now.
We aren't, you know. An icebox grew there
once.
Hand me the chatter and I'll fill the plates
with cookies,
for they can, they must, be passed.
("And Forgetting")
Cookies, crazily, "must" be passed; one must behave as if in a classroom, to be playful and attentive, for the other thing--the end we aren't ready for--will overtake us if we fail to maintain our childlike interests. (Ashbery's most optimistic poems usually take place indoors, in safety, in environments which preclude endlessness.) The same blending of the scholar's voice with the inquiring child's takes over in this book's most triumphant poem, "Notes From the Air":
A yak is a prehistoric cabbage; of that, at
least we may be sure.
But tell us, sages of the solarium, why is that light
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