Ashbery 007

John Ashbery has been appointed mtv's poet laureate (believe it or not). There are links to some interesting Ashbery poems on this site: I spent part of the day reading them. Enjoyed particularly "The New Higher" and "Paradoxes and Oxymorons". "Retro" and "My Philosophy of Life" had some interesting thought processes. The others struck me as remarkable for their emotional blandness. Is this appointment a blurring of that arbitary distinction between so-called "high culture" and "low"? Robert thinks so. In this excellent post he also roots among some earlier critical appraisals of the man. At least, tho, this is mtvU, which purports to be about "everything college".