Your Name Here : Poems

by John Ashbery

• ISBN13: 9780374527839
• ISBN10: 0374527830
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2001-10-03
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

I got kind of frenzied after the waiting had stopped, but now am cool as a suburban garden in some lost city. When it came time for my speech I could think of nothing, of course. I gave a little talk about the onion - how its flavor inspires us, its shape informs our architecture. There were so many other things I wanted to say, too, but, dandified, I couldn't strut, couldn't sit down for all the spit and polish. Now it's your turn to say something about the wall in the garden. It can be anything. - from "Terminal" In his twentieth collection, John Ashbery continues to examine the themes that have preoccupied him of late: age and its inevitable losses, memories of childhood, the transforming magic of dreams in daily living. Your Name Here offers souvenirs to readers, inviting them to "personalize" the poems with their own associations and memories. Ashbery's masterful voice is heard with renewed vigor and poigancy in these beautiful poems.

Author Biography

John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, in 1927 and educated at Harvard and Columbia. He is Charles P. Stevenson Jr., Professor of Language and Literature at Bard College and lives in New York City and Hudson, New York.

Table of Contents

This Room	3	(4)
If You Said You Would Come with Me	4	(1)
A Linnet	5	(1)
The Bobinski Brothers	6	(1)
Not You Again	7	(2)
Terminal	9	(1)
Merrily We Live	10	(2)
Brand Loyalty	12	(2)
Rain in the Soup	14	(1)
Bloodfits	15	(1)
Implicit Fog	16	(1)
Dream Sequence (Untitled)	17	(1)
What Is Written	18	(1)
Caravaggio and His Followers	19	(2)
Industrial Collage	21	(2)
Frogs and Gospels	23	(2)
Weekend	25	(1)
Get Me Rewrite	26	(2)
Invasive Procedures	28	(2)
Paperwork	30	(1)
The History of My Life	31	(1)
Toy Symphony	32	(2)
Memories of Imperialism	34	(2)
Strange Occupations	36	(1)
Full Tilt	37	(1)
The File on Thelma Jordan	38	(3)
Two for the Road	41	(1)
Heartache	42	(2)
The Fortune Cookie Crumbles	44	(1)
Onion Skin	45	(1)
Redeemed Area	46	(2)
Variations on ``La Folia''	48	(2)
De Senectute	50	(2)
The Gods of Fairness	52	(1)
Who Knows What Constitutes a Life	53	(1)
Sacred and Profane Dances	54	(2)
Here We Go Looby	56	(2)
Avenue Mozart	58	(1)
Life Is a Dream	59	(1)
Vowels	60	(1)
Beverly of Graustark	61	(2)
The Pearl Fishers	63	(1)
They Don't Just Go Away, Either	64	(2)
Conventional Wisdom	66	(2)
And Again, March Is Almost Here	68	(2)
A Descent into the Maelstrom	70	(1)
Sonatine Melancolique	71	(2)
Stanzas before Time	73	(1)
A Postcard from Pontevedra	74	(1)
A Suit	75	(1)
Crossroads in the Past	76	(1)
The Water Inspector	77	(1)
Cinema Verite	78	(1)
The Old House in the Country	79	(1)
Autumn Basement	80	(1)
Hang-Up Call	81	(1)
Lost Profile	82	(2)
How Dangerous	84	(1)
Humble Pie	85	(1)
More Hocketing	86	(2)
Amnesia Goes to the Ball	88	(1)
Railroaded	89	(2)
Honored Guest	91	(1)
Our Leader Is Dreaming	92	(1)
Last Legs	93	(1)
Lemurs and Pharisees	94	(2)
The Underwriters	96	(1)
Pale Siblings	97	(1)
Nobody Is Going Anywhere	98	(1)
Poem on Several Occasions	99	(1)
Slumberer	100	(3)
Pot Luck	103	(2)
Short-Term Memory	105	(1)
Vendanges	106	(2)
Small City	108	(2)
Vintage Masquerade	110	(1)
To Good People Who Should Be Going Somewhere Else	111	(1)
Another Aardvark	112	(1)
Has to Be Somewhere	113	(2)
The Don's Bequest	115	(1)
Strange Cinema	116	(1)
A Star Belched	117	(1)
When Pressed	118	(1)
The Impure	119	(1)
Crowd Conditions	120	(1)
Enjoys Watching Foreign Films	121	(1)
Fade In	122	(1)
Over at the Mutts'	123	(1)
Pastilles for the Voyage	124	(1)
Of the Light	125	(1)
Your Name Here	126