john ashbery
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“be frank (if you can’t be frank, be john and kenneth).”
From “The Last Avant-Garde” by David Lehman: [Frank] O’Hara’s ironically self-deprecating tone was much imitated. “I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love,” he wrote. He kiddingly called his own poems “the by-product of exhibitionism” and wrote constantly about his daily life. It was O’Hara who initiated the policy of…
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Wikipedia Poem, No. 208
ok listen i don’t want to be rude court fashion follows cuttings rope or from which rumors and plus you’re old building upon years of respect abound to use verdugado from scandalous illegitimate children’s songs able work that i personally redundant love and admire fashion by pedro de castilla y fonseca el mozo but…
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Mary Karr
Assail self-portrait in U.S. letters today—an invention of his seductive voice this zippo and his seductive voice is influence is influential is inflated enough to take a smart guy immensely charming most celebrated and unclothed enough to take it he’s a smart guy with a genius ear for music In America’s besotted unclothed empire anybody…
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Lilting Towards Bethlehem
Shoulders too narrow Ankles wrapped in fat Where art for your bones What color your breast Bent toward a queer pouch Straight to a sneer slouch Beer luge and bar stool Oxblooded law school, teleporter blues Content is King Google bench in the zoo Zelig demands 400 words on Transformers 2 His diary a cook…
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John Ashbery
Reading Ben Lerner from behind Without Ben Lerner’s express written consent I am Ben Lerner “noctilucent” Against Ben Lerner’s particular ass The pedals of the tricycle in Ben Lerner’s front yard haven’t rotated, felt reciprocation in months But nonetheless, here I am, Ben Lerner Atop Ben Lerner, concerned about Death All tucking away the c-word…
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Sexualizing Christ on the Cross
“and why not say so? You see, griping comes naturally to me and to all mankind. Once, when shut up at the bottom of a shaft of some kind, I assumed that the world would just trickle naturally” — John Ashbery Let’s go back to your place? Implies a need to be witnessed And notarized; sexual,…
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