A passage from John Ashbery's "The Skaters"

In the middle of this passage from John Ashbery's "The Skaters" is a description of a picture in a calendar:

A broken mirror nailed up over a chipped enamel basin, whose turgid waters

Reflect the fly-specked calendar—with ecstatic Dutch girl clasping tulips—

On the far wall. Hanging from one nail, an old velvet hat with a tattered bit of

            veiling—last remnant of former finery.

(John Ashbery, Collected Poems 1956–1987, Library of America, 162)

The poem does not say whether the picture in question is a photograph, a painting, or even a drawing, but the image of the "Dutch girl" is clear and vivid. It is a vision of ecstasy that also stands more broadly for a genre of pictures in whatever format–Dutch pictures, of course, with the tulips as further confirmation of the nationality of the image. The image is both complete in itself and an image of completion, of elements fitting together, of ecstasy as a momentary emotion of wholeness.

            Yet this moment of wholeness and even wholesomeness at the center of the passage is surrounded by images of broken and tainted things. The calendar that contains the image is "fly-specked"; it is seen only in its reflection in the water in a "chipped" sink; above the sink is "a broken mirror"; the "veiling" on the hat hanging on the wall is "tattered". A "broken mirror" does not produce accurate reflections; whoever looks into it will see a distorted version of themselves, and the room described so precisely here will also be distorted. The water in the basin is also a kind of "broken mirror" that also offers a distorted vision of the room. With the hat, the broken doubling of reflections is replaced by the concealment of a veil–but it, too, does not work as it should. The veil, like the mirror, does not serve its purpose effectively. All this "former finery" frames an image of the ecstasy that such finery could create, if it still existed. All that remains of ecstasy is the image of ecstasy–all that remains of an aesthetic of wholeness and sentiment is this "fly-specked" image from a calendar hanging in a room full of broken things.

Just Do It

People will play golf, even if they aren’t Tiger Woods, but longevity isn’t sustained in poetry. Poets won’t write for a lifetime if they can’t see themselves as the next Ashbery? Except, poets certainly do write for lifetimes, with or without Orr’s knowledge, and they do so without worrying about winning the gold cup or whatever prize golfers aim for. There is no set goal in the “game” of poetry, though Orr’s comparison sets the terms as such (i.e. John Ashbery’s Library of America collection). How do sports metaphors of the competitive masculine variety so often wiggle their way into measuring poetry and her cultural cache? What team am I playing for again? Where’s the goal line? Who do I have to smear to get there? Are my subjects suitably dainty as I take up the stick?

(Amy King, "On Greatness & Them That Do It")

Back in about 1997, I participated in the Tempolabor, a weekend event organized by the curator and editor Clementine Deliss, with talks, presentations, and discussions attended by a multitude of artists, curators, and art critics (I was there because I had translated for art catalogs, including for Clementine's magazine Metronome).

For me, the most memorable event of that lively weekend came during a discussion after a talk. I don't remember whose talk it was, or what it was about, but it led Nebojsa Vilic, a Macedonian art historian and curator from Skopje, to give an impassioned, extemporaneous comment on the theme of "Just Do It!"

In the international art world in the nineties (which I grazed a bit in my role as a translator for catalogs), a common issue was whether "anything goes." The boundaries of what could be considered art had been pushed back so far that it seemed like there were no longer any boundaries to push back, as if it were really true that anything could be art.

Vilic's comment was an attempt to downplay the sense of crisis that many of the Tempolabor participants associated with this theme. His analogy was the "Just Do It" commercials that Nike was running at the time. Artists (and curators and critics) should stop worrying and "just do it." The issue was not whether "anything goes" but whether each particular work worked. That's the gist of what he said (at least as I remember it).

Vilic's speech was vigorous and passionate, and I might have remembered it just as well even if it had not triggered a further comment by the Basel artist Eric Hattan. Eric liked the simile, but he pointed out an important difference between Michael Jordan and an artist. No matter what route Jordan took in doing what he did, the goals of "just doing it" were always the same: to score baskets; to win games; to win championships. In contrast, the artist who "just does it" must figure out the rules of each new work from scratch; whether the work is process or product, or some combination of the two, the goals are not known from the start, but only realized through the making of the work.

... for even as golfers are folowing their game’s rules, poets are making their own ways, similarly and separately, differently and communally, as multitudes and as individuals, sans a set standard of formulas and rules. Golf goes after stroke counts and a finish line. Poetry goes after life and everything the concept entails. Greatness certainly is not the little box declaring a winner vis a vis book publication or any golden laurel leaf. Poetry is not merely words on a screen/page or how dramaticaly the poet lived her life. (Amy King from the same post)

Or, to quote two of my touchstones:

Nicht um anzukommen, sondern um aufzubrechen, nicht um Erzählung, Roman oder Buch zu werden, sondern um in Bewegung zu sein und möglichst auch zu bewegen.

Not to arrive, but to set out, not to become a story, a novel, or a book, but to be in motion and, if possible, to move. (Anne Duden, my translation)

Das Schreiben ist notwendig, nicht die Literatur.

Writing is necessary, not literature. (W. G. Sebald, my translation)

Between them, Duden and Sebald articulate why one writes: to write. Not to arrive at a goal, not to publish, not to become "literature"—not to be "great."

(Credit for stimulating this memory goes not only to Amy King but also to Adam Fieled and Joseph Hutchison.)

Publications

Today, in a new experience for me, my mailbox contained not one but two journals that contain poems of mine.

The latest issue (number 27) of "The Reader" contains two of my poems, "Wind" and "September." Nice company: for example, R. S. Thomas and Tom Paulin. "Wind" is on-line as a song I recorded back around 2000.

The latest issue (number 141, Summer 2007) of "Orbis" (the only literary magazine without a website?) contains my poem "Go Ogle" (and the issue even, honor of honors, has my name on the cover!). The poem has already been commented on as "a take on obituaries which is very funny in places"; the commenter (Tony Williams) has two poems in the issue as well. There's also a review of John Ash's latest by Rob Mackenzie.

If anyone who reads the issue of "Orbis" and my poem wants to tell me what they think the poem is about (as I was delighted to hear that it is "a take on obituaries"), I'd love to hear your ideas. I wonder what people might make of it.

I also recently had a poem in "Cadenza" (issue 17): "Fever," which can also be heard at the link for "Wind" above. If you get a look at the issue, don't look in the poetry section for my poem, which is well hidden.

Koethe

Andrew Osborn's interview with John Koethe (from the Southwest Review, on-line at Poetry Daily) not only taught me how to pronounce "Koethe" ("katy"; not a rhyme for "Goethe") but also contained this interesting summary of Koethe's writing style:

"I like poems to be locally clear so that when you're reading them sentence by sentence you sort of think you understand what they're saying. But then I also like them to be globally obscure, so that the whole poem remains the kind of free-standing artifact I was talking about earlier. You don't really know what the whole poem means, but you can read any sentence of it and, in a conventional sense, it seems clear."

I've tried to find the passage where Reginald Shepherd made the same point on his blog, but I have not found it. I was struck by how two quite different points made the same claim (one I am quite sympathetic to).

I printed out the interview to read it because it is so long. I had also printed out John Ashbery's "Yes, 'Senor' Fluffy" from PD, and it happened to be the next thing in my pile of things to read. The last lines of the interview with Koethe refer to "an enchanting exhibition devoted entirely to clouds" that he attended in Berlin. The first lines of Ashbery's poem:

And the clouds fretted and flew, as though
there was a reason for their acting distraught.