Don't remember where I found this
The journeys on which Ashbery sends us do not run from A to B. Any linearity of thought is lost in the woods. Rather, insights accrue at the margins, sudden revelations are not what we first thought, emotions are located but cannot be tracked. The question is how - not what - do his poems mean. Composition and content amount to the same thing. As the poet Charles Simic has observed: "Whatever an Ashbery poem eventually turns out to be about is not an idea he started with but something he stumbled upon as he shuffled phrases and images like a pack of cards. It's precisely because he has nothing to say initially that he is able to say something new
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