As I sit looking out of a window of the building / I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new metal.

Got 400 years?

Looks like Ubu has recently archived WAY too many John Ashbery audio files. Readings, interviews, lectures, etc.

www.JOHN ASHBERY AUDIO BECAUSE NOW IS AS GOOD A TIME AS ANY

It's fucking unbelievably way too much.
But it arrives at a great time!

With the days getting longer, you can keep his voice on while you're grilling or getting an evening haircut in your kitchen.

His emotionally sweeping 1985 collection, A Wave, has been keeping me more than company over the last little minute. It's kind of a sea-change operation, and, well, pretty moving.

His voice is another thing altogether. Round and sharp? Horsehair. Pragmatic and shy and confident.

And to think! just last week I played his reading of The Tennis Court Oath for Irwin. It's one of the many worthwhile contributions on the suggestively-covered Disconnected release by Giorno Poetry Systems back in 1974. A bunch of poets reading on record. Meanwhile, you can download the whole GPS catalogue here.

Quite a record cover.
I guess it was just a miscellaneously gay time for poetics in the USA.

Speaking of, since when is John Ashbery a queerman's Conan O'Brien?

Now for a poem. As a coda.

This Room


The room I entered was a dream of this room.
Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.
The oval portrait
of a dog was me at an early age.
Something shimmers, something is hushed up.


We had macaroni for lunch every day
except Sunday, when a small quail was induced
to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?
You are not even here.

From the 2000 collection Your Name Here

Enjoy your haircut. xo