Homage to Ashbery Re-Cap

It is with pleasure that I introduce Abigail H., thus fulfilling my promise of savvy assistance.  I apologize for the quality of the picture below, but you can just make out our boss.  So cheers to Abi, let's have the re-cap:

By the end of last night's Homage to Ashbery: a Group Reading at Tishman, we were all up to our eyebrows in warm, refreshing Ashbery love. It was a good homage--free of the eulogy flavor of a funeral and the pomp and circumstance of a high school homecoming; and after listening to twenty-five poets proclaim their Ashbery lineage in poetry, anectdotes, and their subscription to the John Ashbery philosophy of life, we all felt we were part of this gene pool too, and that perhaps a little Ashbery has trickled down the lines to all of us.

The poets read in alphabetical order from works that spanned the whole of Ashbery's repertoire.  Our own Daniel Halpern read from the title poem from the forthcoming A Worldly Country (Ecco,
2007) while David Lehman, the host of the evening, read "To a Waterfowl," an Ashbery poem from 1961 (printed only once). The poets chose their favorites, the poems that inspired their own work, or in the case of Tomoyuki Iino, a poet on sabbatical from a university in Tokyo, the poem that was "haunting for me"--"They Dream of America." Ann Lauterbach and Rod Padgett argued over "A Blessing in Disguise." Ann won, and Ron read "Two Scenes" instead, and appeared only mildly miffed. The night made it clear that a treasured poem was not something any one of them would give up without a fight; Ann did confess, "It was bloody." After providing a few anectdotes, which he told us he promised David Lehman he wouldn't do, David Shapiro read "How to Continue." And then there was Jacek Gutorow, from Poland, who shrugged his shoulders at the microphone and said "This is the poem I love," and read "Late Echo."

Many of the poets followed their Ashbery reading with one of their own poems, much to our listening pleasure. Billy Collins read "January in Paris" and Geoffrey O'Brien read "Jungle Moon Men" and into these and into others, Ashbery has passed ideas and themes, simple parallels and similarities. Some even worked directly from Ashbery's poems, like Bob Holman. Holman took characters from Ashbery's "Girls on the Run" and reanimated them in a poem of his own, acting them out on stage with the occasional Lulu (hands overhead in a jazzy pose). But it was James Tate, who will be introducing Mr. Ashbery's reading tonight at Tishman, and his choice, "My Philosophy of Life," that seemed to bring what many others that night gave thanks for into the clearest focus.

In all, as I say, a good homage. Leaving, I felt, as one hopes to feel--under the influence, in on what Star Black called "John's philosophy," and part of the celebration.

Before I go, for those you who don't know, April 7th has been officially declared John Ashbery Day by the City of New York. So, ladies and gents, a happy John Ashbery Day to you all.