"Voyage in the Blue" Engagement #6
October 31, 2022
I’m beginning to think an Ashbery poem is not suited for this kind of exercise. Repeated exposure is rewarding until it isn’t, and this week I find myself bored with this particular work. When I pick up Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, I skip past “Voyage” and dive into its neighbors. I am not sick of Ashbery, but any one Ashbery loses potency without the gift of time. I did not enter a fugue on this reading. I remained myself, and conscious of the clock, I skimmed, the words registering blurrier than ever. Ashbery poems are the highest form of larks. They are not stupid, but they resist interpretation, and toy with the erudite literary brigade. So on one rail, “Voyage” isn’t really about anything. Yet it has meant a lot to me. “Voyage” tackles time and how you spend it. From it, that’s the biggest lift I’ve made. But if, to return to the Koestenbaum quote, I read “Voyage” to fruitfully waste my time, and I think about time while reading it, if time is in fact core to my appreciation of the poem, time the central idea cluster, time this and time that, eventually other time thoughts creep in…
I want to spend mine doing something else.
…
One bad week…