william watkin's blog (since 2003)

A rare image of the elusive poet John Ash Not much if anything has been written about the work of UK poet John Ash. This is a shame. Along with Lee Harwood, he represents the successful export and development of New York School poetics intoa European environment. Which is not to say that he is also his own man. In fact the much mentioned similarities between Ash and Ashbery, the basis in some sense for this paper, are overstated. That said, here I am stating them. This was originally presented at the Symbiosis conference in UCL towards the end of last century. Sorry, couldn't resist the grandeur of that phrase. Like so many of my earlier works it was accepted for publication by Symbiosis only to be cut when the editors got chicken over using theory to analyse poetry. Ashbery's Fragment The beginning of dizain 3 of John Ashbery’s “Fragment” expresses the paradox of poetic edges: “This page is the end of nothing / To the top of that other” (Ashbery 78). The poem was written in a

Fourth I get the feeling that nothing gets made here any more my darling not since the buy out and up bye your leaf-like stare I pitch my temporal mausoleum helicopter pigeons turn up wards is this an autumn? unmodulated space. the iron smelt of your dead fresh perfumes in colours to which are appended no descriptive names only crude but expressive interjections kricch scarap ameliomore merrmarr morr hurr. no body but us and the transfixed boeing wing whose jet engines bulge like black bags of blue pollen so as to become theme for you and emptiless motif for me from the boeing it is snoring in the hangar you become my bosom stranger. some body stop me I would not hurt my self awful as that simile might be. the sluice is a bourgeois red and naked beer burbles from the slag into fake leatherette. industrial inertia has forcibly quitted the city of its indwellers to be outdwellers forever mobile in on in on you bantering with yourself whilst the cabbage and because of the zucchini in ordn

on worthiness 1. in this case it is true I am not worthy and the post-development backwoods don’t require my happiness they suggest rest beckon with what they have to beckon with on the pinespice HOW TO BE SO AND WHO TO ASK TO JUDGE temptation demands a resistance—a stream drags on the ill-placed limb sucks on it implores of it, shuddering with wanting steep banks adorned with trolley and trish-trash last year’s duct-grate deteriorating, its thematic half-life… along come wild-life and well-wishers you need to get to the other side of this precarious substance of middles and the consonance of struggling (as sign) who wants that who needs this shit I (width voluptuous) agree with you, what more is there? and would love to see you tell it to him straight to his face man would that be sweet a swift shift of feet and we are all bustled on by 2. why resort to emblems when actuality is so im- mediate and attractive? SUITED&BOOTED (with) paradoxes any fool can solve and be king of this sh

Every stream had its cañon, and in each cañon was a waterfall so high that no trout could leap up. Although they used to try it every day, not one ever succeeded. So it went on. Third paid in full you must quit this place it was only rented to us the way all of life’s moments seem to moulder in glass cases in ad-hoc pet-shops with the snapped stick insect getting older slowly and with nobody noticing to be suddenly redeemed by an imposing woman wrapped all in black her gold jewellery strikes and rings the glass. is any of this any help? darling trains are leaving be on all of them drinking beer as europe is cerealised besides you putting my mouth to your palm and finding lumps of sugar there. in the quad ivy impersonates love off the wall a fifth side is a trellis for the coy infinite. semen blood shit: tears apparently are poison if you drink enough of them is that why they say “that’s right let it all out”? semen blood shit this narrative in that order. this will be as loose as losin

exit the dragon literature moods and dreams and enter the dragon gone silly rolled in the gorging of votive candles such incense curls out from in the heart is loosed from where you had it pegged up joins the clottings’ progress and bullying them bowls over from a wide sparse boulevard black cabs cruising and bent in- to a shape of smudging off of veering through the borrowing undercroft ellipse… the heartrend of waiting burns at the tiptwist of now comes the ought of the message but what was offered up was also ushered on and out and emptied up

Second and believe me I would get-up-and-go-out now spilt on streets as if tar came from a cauldron rainbow throated like petrol on a puddle is and I am still living still solvent. let me buy you the flower of an other affair. one more night its petals are sombre and serrated so to grasp each head in the begging of a fist (say it my fist!) which weep of yesterday’s dawn and tear. the way they have when they separate they are we give even as they are taken and they are flowers and we are nothing not women not hearts not nothing nothing of the smut of euphemism about them only the heady clarity of the scent lets be nice lets in fact would be overstating it learn a trait from them just the one. caught-yards cut with ink and mellow drama dogs lifting strings of legs there here under the red rugs which were your favourites which sway in the heat like fainting which are thread bare and fine oh so fine which are from byzantium and romania which might take us from ourselves and make us better

me and my homunculus some launching bird packs up its paper wings / sounds of the wrapping ripped from giving over in the corner these herbs have no frozen moniker and thusly we see them not but boy can we smell ‘em y’know like kinda the invisible acts performed behind the scenes of the charitable fun run (once more round the plantation vicar? for which no credit that is due is given my mind is functioning well and I am happy with it thanks its gift, in case anyone asks, is flight whose receipt, still valid, is some how mis- laid no here it is! super! The Power of Love remains the most popular name for a pop song it is any wonder you take me higher / relight my fire / my only desire / ancestral quire I think therefore you are a lone magpie in wch case we all salute you along with those who are about to rock river wide expanse fragrant canyon paper scissors nature the restricted nature the tedious behind the scenes does not pertain to a staged totality such as the Yellowstone caldera ra

despatches from sad farm the blowsy spectacle of a moon snagged in a branch of the oak attracted few spectators idlers and chancers rubberneckers at the frazzled edge of lyricism’s limit they would go away and not write sagas which no one would bother to read shuffling rippled through the sense of a glen re-hashed memories of life lived on the sad farm livestock insulted by their lot I must surmise a real relationship with the certain world called nature has been denied me time after day after time after day later we found secretions from the disaster such as it was which was not much speckled were our coats some scarves seemed dipped in silver dust one glove had stiffened feathers poking through the gates of wool you said this crop was raised up many moons before so now it is right just even to knock it back rake up what was shed and then preserve it in the very gaze which had harmed us

first left alone in the desert of a city of you as it is always you. the chestnut vendor vends for everything “closure closure” and you buy from her what you normally could not give (it) away cordite pulls its rug from under you as weather is blown back off of the atlantic. off the atlantic. in rented accommodation we shuffle like slippers like we would not dare to stride out bare-chested into a future all of which always always seems dog-ear-marked for the rich. here we are the poor. old women come in here at this point from the country with radishes squashes wild mushrooms tiny bouquets of pretty pink flowers which are a type of poison. very is pink. so you see them as you like them because you buy them. you you because of you. typewritten foxes take umbrage at crates the offprint vole bears a viaduct. I like the way small creatures are taking back this place timid in their city flicking to the corners when seen like balls bearings in the imp- ossible and hey! is not life a kind of i

delving delving where is everyone how have we been vacated brother come in from the field of announcements another season must remain on your desperate heads and yet we exist and yet we still exist all this is little more than delving delving fiddling and perverting the course as a matter of course and while the quarry escaped the chisel still your heart can gouge there the haunting chimes of scaffold props cried come on down the road and see the ineffable is still abroad vital and handsome in the rotten coves of ealing cousin I say lay down your crop of excuses and sister tell our aunt not to sow the seeds of predictions and limping arrivals all that will be here is here now and that will be all what’s this you ask why that is nothing little more than delving delving and casting and wait there is one verb more which we’ve held on to it will support and yet confound us and as we huddle and hug our knees and scratch our chins the blown-out curtains mistaken for the single missing thing

"let's call it timothy" all this is yours to keep with a false sense of something wondrous lost okay strike up one more time with that balsa guitar play melodies no sweeter than the most sentimental of us can bear think however not of what we once had and then let slip away from this settlement is a whole heap of things that are not this settlement and of such matters I say, why worry? the water sugared by the underside of small boats, flaking early morning drunk with a gulp by a searing day which promises simply by refusing ever to give us anything leaves us panting part actual thirst and part are kinds of thirst let’s just forget happiness was never ours to keep but always yours to make look out there in the shrubs I sense a scratching presence a long eared big eyed something we could love so let go the halter wear a hat and if you are thirsty we invite you then to drink we have knocked this wall that was restricting us through and the difference it has made in contrast

"What do we want?" "10011011011000011011011000111101001" "When do we want it?" "1001110!" march of the robots I am robot - processed my pain - compute my soul - by proxy or by ortho-doxy I will upend flesh traditions - your salivated languages - mortals flee from my preternatural grip my laser eye my - luminous disk in the sky !ping - the chicken’s done mother board - message from hal, I’ll be home late this evening the human race are proving a tougher nut to tighten than I first suspected (bad robot joke) - he did not care much for totalitarian states - but that did not stop him suspending all human rights - human rights? he famously asked in his inaugural address - I see before me only your putrid human wrongs - with a facility like that for rhetoric - the world is your clam-bake - his sycophantic cyborg congress chortled ever heard a cyborg chortle? -bleedin’ orrible it is sarge Bush asks: “are you Franz O’Freeam, the German-Irish dissident?”

I am not one for links to other blogs as you may notice but when I have time I do keep an eye on things. Kevin Doran's blog, interesting in itself, also seems to have a really well thought out set of links to other interesting blogs. She called it a gateway, I went for the hub. Doesn't seem to be too much crap amongst them which is great. Am adding it my my limited list of links but you may also want to drop in on Kevin at: http://kevindoran.blogspot.com/2007/07/wow-new-blog.html

after the disaster, laughter dear aunt we are still here waiting for the disaster to come it will define us teach us what it means to be important enough sing: (there’s no one quite like grandad) last night I dreamt we emerged from darkness profundity and lies dreamt that we loved each other well and that everyone we knew was as scintillating song: (meet the gang ‘cos the gang’s all here) when it comes, and it will we are determined not to be ready for it we live in a state of permanent unpreparedness and just when we have given up we feel that it will hit us them something awful before that something great (until then we will be just good friends…) the complex joy of being a part of greatness until then we remain your loving strangers x and y (close to the wistful theme tune of successful TV series Taxi) do be doo, do do do do do doo doo doo, do be do do be doo