Two by John Ashbery

The Problem of Anxiety

Fifty years have passed
since I started living in those dark towns
I was telling you about.
Well, not much has changed. I still can't figure out
how to get from the post office to the swings in the park.
Apple trees blossom in the cold, not from conviction,
and my hair is the color of dandelion fluff.


Suppose this poem were about you-would you
put in the things I have carefully left out:
descriptions of pain, and sex, and how shiftily
people behave toward each other? Naw, that's
all in some book it seems. For you
I've saved the descriptions of chicken sandwiches,
and the glass eye that stares at me in amazement
from the bronze mantle, and will never be appeased.




Today's Academicians


Again, what forces the critic to bury his
agenda in interleaving textualities and so
bring the past face-to-face with his present
isn't naughty, but it is both silly and wrong.
The past will have to get by on sheer pluck
or charm, entirely consistent with its ten-
dency to nullify and romanticize things. The
way a pain begins. The flying squirrels of
this particular rain forest mope in flight;
the audience has already done what it can for
them; and the pure light of their endeavor
bespeaks the modesty of the program: "mere?"
anarchy. That the men with spotted suits
and ties get down to it is one more nail in
their coffin. These portly curmudgeons dig-
nify no endeavor and are also about as "right"
as the weather ever gets. All in my time.
More meteor magic. Seems like.


-both from Ashbery's Notes from the Air.