From Baudelaire Through Ashbery, A Poem

I wish I wish I wish I had a bed of poems

could sleep like mad Charles beneath the sky

wonder the silky star threads to milky

fever of rhymed reason for every season’s

turn below the heavens. I wish I wish

from my attic’s cowcatcher, chin to hand

I might gaze across the steeples to hear

here the wanderous song of life’s chord.

 

I wish I wish my words like Sir John’s tweets

might radiate the mists of time, a lamp

in the window, mavin to blue spirits

adrift along sooted rivers. A shore

to shelter until Spring’s Autumn dance

of December snows drifted off

like so many shuttered shades being pulled

up on the parlous flight of a Knight’s folly.

 

I wish I could conjure a blue Lilly

congo frieze my alabaster pad

peck tongue to every bird’s beak

baby every Baby hustling bye 

by bye my despotic window.

I wish I wish I wish a poem

wasn’t so damn resistant to a sun’s thoughts,

a little less self absorbed in silence. 

Ken e Bujold

Reviews

[W. Barrett Munn]

From the dreamer looking out over Paris rooftops from an attic to the twisted yet connected musings of JA you have captured your game and have it mounted.

Winston

[Ken e Bujold]

thanks. was reading Ash this morning, a poem called A Landscape, which was his rewrite of Baudelaire's poem by the same name. Because I couldn't call off the top of my head B's I pulled it off the shelf. On reading it, I found myself musing over it, the way A had wheeled from it, and next thing I know I am crafting this. Began more as an exercise. Line lists of B's lines, key phrase etc, then lists of associations, then craft of Vs. First v was/is meant to read closer to B, 2nd A starts to take hold, 3 A gives way to me. Think I managed it reasonably well

ken

[W. Barrett Munn]

I think it quite difficult to emulate another poet but I got the sense of the movement from B to A but you and A share similarities.

Winston

[Ken e Bujold]

Yes A and I do. He is major influence. How words can be used outside their typical boundaries if arrows are clearly marked. Where he and I diverge a little, is that I am a tad more cynical than he. Ashbery could be sharp-tongued, and a keen observer of world's sublime qualities, but he was always the academic accountant. I, l like to think, am a bit more of stable imp throwing cow paddies