And the Stars Were Shining
Poems
John Ashbery
FOR ANNE DUNN
Contents
Publisher’s Note
TOKEN RESISTANCE
SPRING CRIES
THE MANDRILL ON THE TURNPIKE
ABOUT TO MOVE
GHOST RIDERS OF THE MOON
THE LOVE SCENES
JUST WHAT’S THERE
TITLE SEARCH
FREE NAIL POLISH
TILL THE BUS STARTS
THE RIDICULOUS TRANSLATOR’S HOPES
THE STORY OF NEXT WEEK
A HUNDRED ALBUMS
A WALTZ DREAM
FALLS TO THE FLOOR, COMES TO THE DOOR
THE LOUNGE
THE IMPROVEMENT
“THE FAVOR OF A REPLY
A HELD THING
STRANGE THINGS HAPPEN AT NIGHT
WORLD’S END
ICE CREAM IN AMERICA
WORKS ON PAPER I
LOCAL TIME
WELL, YES, ACTUALLY
MY GOLD CHAIN
FOOTFALLS
WEATHER AND TURTLES
SOMETIMES IN PLACES
WILLIAM BYRD
ASSERTIVENESS TRAINING
LIKE A SENTENCE
TWO PIECES
THE FRIENDLY CITY
THE DESPERATE HOURS
THE DECLINE OF THE WEST
THE ARCHIPELAGO
GUMMED REINFORCEMENTS
SPOTLIGHT ON AMERICA
WHAT DO YOU CALL IT WHEN
PLEASURE BOATS
PRETTY QUESTIONS
PATHLESS WANDERINGS
ON FIRST LISTENING TO SCHREKER’S DER SCHATZGRÄBER
DINOSAUR COUNTRY
LEEWARD
PARAPH
NOT PLANNING A TRIP BACK
MYRTLE
MAN IN LUREX
IN THE MEANTIME, DARLING
JUST FOR STARTERS
BROMELIADS
COMMERCIAL BREAK
SICILIAN BIRD
MUTT AND JEFF
COVENTRY
AND THE STARS WERE SHINING
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.
TOKEN RESISTANCE
As one turns to one in a dream
smiling like a bell that has just
stopped tolling, holds out a book,
and speaks: “All the vulgarity
of
time, from the Stone Age
to our present, with its noodle parlors
and token resistance, is as a life
to the life that is given you. Wear it,”
so must one descend from checkered heights
that are our friends, needlessly
rehearsing what we will say
as a common light bathes us,
a common fiction reverberates as we pass
to the celebration. Originally
we weren’t going to leave home. But made bold
somehow by the rain we put our best foot forward.
Now it’s years after that. It
isn’t possible to be young anymore.
Yet the tree treats me like a brute friend;
my own shoes have scarred the walk I’ve taken.
SPRING CRIES
Our worst fears are realized.
Then a string of successes, or failures, follows.
She pleads with us to stay: “Stay,
just for a minute, can’t you?”
We are expelled into the dust of our decisions.
Knowing it would be this way hasn’t
made any of it easier to understand, or bear.
May is raving. Its recapitulations
exhaust the soil. Across the marsh
some bird misses its mark, walks back, sheepish, cheeping.
The isthmus is gilded white. People are returning
to the bight: adult swimmers, all of them.
THE MANDRILL ON THE TURNPIKE
It’s an art, knowing who to put with what,
and then, while expectations drool, make off with the lodestar,
wrapped in a calico handkerchief, in your back pocket. All right,
who’s got it? Don’t look at me, I’m
waiting for my date, she’s already fifteen minutes late.
Listen, wiseguy—but the next instant, traffic drowns us
like a field of hay.
Now it’s no longer so important
about getting home, finishing the job—
see, the lodestar had a kind of impact
for you, but only if you knew about it. Otherwise,
not to worry, the clock strikes ten, the evening’s off and running.
Then, while every thing and body are getting sorted out,
the—well, you know, what I call the subjunctive creeps back in,
sits up, begs for a vision,
or a cookie. Meanwhile where’s the bird?
Probably laying eggs or performing some other natural function. Why,
am I my brother’s keeper, my brother the spy?
You and Mrs. Molesworth know more than you’re letting on.
“I came here from Clapham,
searching for a whitewashed cottage in which things were dear to me
many a summer. We had our first innocent
conversation here, Jack. Just don’t lie to me—
I hate it when people lie to me. They
can do anything else to me, really. Well, anything
within reason, of course.”
Why it was let for a song, and that seasons ago.
And the bellybuttons all danced around
and the ironing board ambled back to the starting gate
and meaningless violence flew helplessly overhead
which was too much for the stair
Better to get in bed they cry
since Zeus the evil one has fixed his beady eye on us
and will never come to help us
But out of that a red song grew
in waves overwhelming field and orchard
Do not go back it said for if there is one less of you
at the time of counting it will go bad with you
and even so, many hairy bodies got up and left
Now if there was one thing that could save the situation
it was the cow on its little swatch of land
I give my milk so that others will not dry up
it said and gladly offer my services to the forces of peace and niceness
but what really does grow under that tree
By now it had all become a question of saving face
Many at the party thought so
that these were just indifferent conditions
that had existed before in the past from time to time
so nobody got to find out about the king of hearts
said the woman glancing off her shovel The snow continued
to descend in rows this rubble that is like life infested with death
only do not go there the time should not be anymore
I have read many prophetic books and I can tell you
now to listen and endure
And first the goat arose and circled halfway around the ilex tree
and after that
several gazed from their windows
to observe the chaos harvesting itself
laying itself in neat rows before the circled wagons
and it was then that many left the painted cities
saying we can remember those colors it is enough
and we can go back tragically but what would be the point
and the laconic ones disappeared first
and the others backtracked and soon all was well enough
GHOST RIDERS OF THE MOON
Today I would leave it just as it is.
The pocket comb—“dirty as a comb,” the French say,
yet not so dirty, surely not in the spiritual sense
some intuit; the razor, lying at an angle
to the erect toothbrush, like an alligator stalking
a bayadère; the singular effect of all things
being themselves, that is, stark mad
with no apologies to the world or the ether,
and then the crumbling realization that a halt
has been called. That the stair treads
conspired in it. That the boiling oil
hunched above the rim of its vessel, and just sat there.
That there were no apologies to be made, ever
again, no alibis for the articles returned to the store,
just a standoff, placid, eternal. And one can admire
again the coatings of things, without prejudice
or innuendo, and the kernels be discreetly
disposed of—well, spat out. Such
objects as my endurance picks out
like a searchlight have gone the extra mile
too, like schoolchildren, and are seated now
in attentive rows, waiting trimly for these words to flood
distraught corners of silences. We collected
them after all for their unique
indifference to each other and to the circus
that houses us all, and for their collectibility—
that, and their tendency to fall apart.
THE LOVE SCENES
After ten years, my lamp
expired. At first I thought
In the convenience store of spring
I met someone who knew someone I loved
by the dairy case. All ribbons parted
on a veil of musicks, wherein
unwitting orangutans gambled for socks,
and the tasseled enemy was routed.
Up in one corner a plaid puff of smoke
warned mere pleasures away. We
were getting on famously—like
“houses on fire,” I believe the expression
is. At midterm I received permission
to go down to the city. There,
in shambles and not much else, my love
waited. It was all too blissful not
to take in, a grand purgatorial
romance of kittens in a basket.
And with that we are asked to be pure,
to wash our hands of stones and seashells—
my poster plaste
red everywhere.
When two people meet, the folds can fall
where they may. Leaves say it’s OK.
JUST WHAT’S THERE
Haven’t you arrived yet?
A sleepiness of doing dissolved my one
scruple: I lay on the concrete belvedere section
belabored by sun.
Nuts convened in the chancel,
a posse wheezed by in some oater: Chapter I, etc.
In the past I was bitten.
Now I believe.
Nothing is better than nothing at all.
Winter. Mice sleep peacefully in their dormers.
The old wagon gets through;
the parcel of contraband is noted:
a brace of ibex horns,
a scale worshipfully sung at the celesta.
We know nothing about anything.
The wind pours through us as through a bag
of horse chestnuts. Speak.
The orderly disappeared down the hall.
For a long time a sound of ferns rallied, then
nothing, only dumb snapshots of unknown corners
in strange cities. The tedious process
of fitting endings to stories.
Ground review. An obscurantist’s trick.
Once you’ve wheedled as many as are there
at a given time, there’s a certainty of dawn
in the not-much-else-colored sky. A phone booth
pivots daintily in air. O crawl back to the peach
ladder. A comic-book racetrack breathes somewhere.
A pianola was offered:
astonishment on the third floor.
The nice whore mended her ways.
The breathing came fast and thick.
The ushers will please take their seats.
TITLE SEARCH
Voices of Spring. Vienna Bonbons.
Morning Papers. Visiting Firemen. Mourning Polka.
Symphonie en ut dièse majeur. Fog-soaked Extremities.
Agrippa. Agrippine. Nelly and All. The Day
the Coast Came to Our House.
Hocus Focus. Unnatural Dreams. The Book of Five-Dollar Poems.
Oaks and Craters. Robert, a Rhapsody. Cecilia Valdés.
The Jewish Child. Mandarin Sorcerers. The Reader’s Digest
Book of Posh Assignations. The Penguin Book of Thwarted Lovers.