The Ashbery Park of Amusement Initiated on His Birthday

JA & DL Instituto Cervantes 2004I interviewed John Ashbery more than once. Sometimes it was for a newspaper or magazine. Later, when I hosted “poetry forums” at the New School, at which the visitor would read for thirty minutes and then take questions from the moderator for an equal amount of time, John appeared in our series maybe half a dozen times over the years. 

In a public setting, he was a fun interview  but not an easy one. He could, keeping a straight face, make me and the audience laugh. Jack Benny“Jack Benny was my role model,” he confided. John was shy, guarded, even sometimes suspicious, and I would endeavor to reorient the conversation after one of his spontaneous witticisms brought us to a cul de sac. Sometimes he delivered a brilliant line in the most off-the-cuff manner. Always cordial, John was happiest when the ordeal was over and we could repair to Cafe Loup for martinis.  

Nicole Santalucia and Dante Distefano are working on a book of “Dear John” letters they are writing. I offered to introduce such a book with a list of questions to ask JA now that he can no longer dodge them. Here’s what I came up with:

Ask JA

Ask JA about rejections.

Ask JA whether anyone still calls him JA.

Ask JA whether anyone still calls him “Ashes” (Deerfield).

Ask JA whether he feels an affinity with others who have the initials JA, such as Joan Allen, who played Pat Nixon in Oliver Stone’s movie, and John Anderson, who ran for president in 1980, or John Adams who writes operas, and Jane Austen, who wrote great novels, and Joan of Arc, who saved France.

Joan of ArcAsk JA for his frank opinion of Joan of Arc by Jules Bastien-Lepage at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which I know I’m not supposed to like but I like it anyway.

Ask JA whether he feels an affinity with other Leos born on July 28 such as Jacqueline Kennedy, Marcel Duchamp, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Ask JA whether he, a southpaw, admires other lefthanders such as Sandy Koufax and Whitey Ford.

Ask JA about 1938 when he was eleven. Ask him if life then seemed “more real,” for the satisfaction of hearing him say “stop asking me all those biographer questions.”

Tell JA about the copyeditor of The Last Avant-Garde who said Ashbery is a homophobe.

Ashbery & Jane FreilicherAsk JA what if anything he remembers about “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” which we watched on TV in 1976.

Tell JA about the student who said “the more I understand John Ashbery, the less I understand his poetry.”

Ask JA if “understanding” is the booby prize.

Ask JA whether he can smoke in heaven and does he still favor unfiltered Gitanes?

Tell JA about Ashberyland, the amusement park in southern California, and the comoc-strip character named Ashbery.

Dear John, I always enjoyed giving you good news and the latest po-biz gossip during a late morning phone call.

Nicole SantaluciaTell JA that Nicole and Dante are writing him “Dear John” letters.

Dear JA, They love you, and isn’t it wonderful?

Ask JA about the game of word association in which each of us has to respond to “fear,” “near,” “queer,” “mere,” and “rear,” each a typo for “John.”

Dear JA, Is the secret of “The Skaters” that you were homesick for your boyhood, boring though it was at the time, full of snow and the loneliness of your diary?  

Ask JA about the train ride to Chicago.

Dear JA, If you meet Nicole and Dante on Tuesday, Delmore Schwartz will come along for the ride.

Dear JA, did Norman Mailer’s ghost visit your rooms at Dunster House in your junior year at Harvard?

Dear John, What’s your opinion of “dear John” letters? As a genre, I mean?

Ask JA how he knew that Eurydice would have disappeared even if Orpheus didn’t turn around.

Freud1Ask JA why he likes Freud’s titles – “The Problem of Anxiety,” “Civilization and Its Discontents” – though you know he will dodge the question.

Ask JA if life is but a dream.

Ask JA whether his favorite stock is still Tootsie Roll, as he told me it was in 1988 or ’89 but has since denied it.

Ask JA what he really thinks.

— David Lehman

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Author: The Best American Poetry