And Lawrence Ferlinghetti, last of the Beats! He is 98.

I have a bilingual volume called Beat published in Moscow, 2004. It's pretty good. Ferlinghetti appears after Ginsberg.
There's a Wilbur thread in General Talk.

Cheers,
John

Gibberish.


Alas.

Not Ferlinghetti.

Allen, do you really think it is gibberish? Maybe the weaker poems, but "Into the Dusk-Charged Air," my favorite Ashbery, is hardly gibberish. I think it is amazing and beautiful; there is a recording of his reading it and I was struck by how everyone laughed at the same line—a line that has no right to be funny but somehow is.

I don't understand Sam's poem. Ashbery never wrote a blank poem, and his mien is totally different from Cage's. I appreciate the work of both.

I should never have spoken ill of the recently dead. I apologize to his ghost and his friends. Obviously, I haven't read enough of his good poems. Apologies.

Walter, Cage was an immense influence on Ashbery, though most of the latter's friends were other poets and painters. I like Ashbery at his most garrulous, poems like "Leaving Atocha Station" and "Daffy Duck in Hollywood." But he was notoriously reticent (though interviewed many times) about his own poetry. I don't think Ashbery knew Rothko very well personally, but his comments on the latter's work are revealing:

http://edwardbyrne.blogspot.com/2007...my-rothko.html

I have revised the title to "Ashbery Met in Heaven by John Cage" and added a few lines of clarification.

One of my favorite Talking Heads songs. Heaven.