On Meeting John Ashbery
Scott Keeney

I met up with him outside Lamont Library
where he had just given a splendid reading
in The Forum Room. This was the spring
of ’98. In fact, it was May Day. I had
the day off from work because I managed to
get someone at Borders that week to trade
shifts with me. One of the managers there,
Erin I think her name was, said she had a friend
who had seen Ashbery read once and he
gave the most boring reading and that Ashbery
was even known for it. I told Erin
I hadn’t heard that. Anyway, it was the early
evening when KC and I rode the red line
into Harvard Square. We got there early
but the place was already packed. We were
lucky to find two seats together just a few rows
in from the back. I remember KC and I
asking each other who this guy was who did
these great introductions at practically every
reading in the Boston area we went to.
It wasn’t until a month later when I met
Joe Torra that I learned that Bill Corbett was
that guy. Anyway, the next time I worked
with Erin, I told her how Ashbery gave
probably the best reading I had ever seen,
how his words were perfectly paced and sounded
and spent, how even his asides about the poems
were brief and humorous. When I caught up
with him outside, he greeted me cordially.
He was possibly the most dignified person
I had ever met, but he was completely without
a superior air. I’m not one to collect signatures
so I didn’t bring any of the half dozen books
of his I owned. Instead, I tried to ask him a
question about the poem as experience and
what it might mean to incorporate a poetics
based on the experience of experience
where words are crucial informants of said
experience, essential instruments but not
necessarily, or at all really, intrinsic to—
but before I could finish my question he placed
a hand on my shoulder and asked me
to be quiet because the people behind us
were saying something, and he was trying to hear.

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