"Something Close to Music" by John Ashbery (David Zwirner Books, 2022)
One of the beautiful things about John Ashbery’s poetry is that it is like if one walks into a private conversation, and you, as the listener, have to make sense of it all. It’s the personal made into the public, and one is drawn into Ashbery’s poetry in that sense of exploration.
One of the excellent publishing series is ekphrasis by the gallery David Zwirner. They publish out-of-print or new pieces, usually by a well-known writer/critic of the visual arts. It’s a perfect match between the written word and the visual. John Ashbery’s Something Close to Music is a late collection of art criticism/commentary with some poetry, and even more interesting to me are his music playlists from 1988 to 2009. Ashbery was a fan of music. It was essential to his writing, as well as his overall aesthetic life. His taste is 20th-century classical music. Of course, John Cage is on the list, but the surprises are John Zorn, Brian Eno, and Pink Martini’s Sympathique.
The other thing that surprised me is Ashbery commenting on photographers Rudy Burckhardt (well, not that much of a surprise, same social circle/generation) and Robert Mapplethorpe. In my mind, I only think of him writing about painters associated with the poetry scene around Ashbery. He can articulate the artist’s landscape in the most minimal number of pages, which is the best thing I have read on Mapplethorpe and Burckhardt. The other artists he comments on are the usual (but great) suspects such as Joe Brainard, Larry Rivers, Joan Mitchell, Ellsworth Kelly, and others. Ashbery and his fellow artists/poets were part of the classic Manhattan vista. Even though these are the late writings from the master, it never grows old. Although things change and people die, it never leaves me.