PoemTalk 127 Full Video: On John Ashbery's "The Short Answer"

Susan McCabe and Robert von Hallberg join Al Filreis and Marjorie Perloff at Marjorie's home in Pacific Palisades, CA to discuss one of John Ashbery's later poems, "The Short Answer."
PoemTalk is published jointly by Kelly Writers House and the Poetry Foundation. For more episodes of PoemTalk, check out the PoemTalk section on Jacket2: jacket2.org/content/poem-talk
You can also subscribe to PoemTalk on iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/p...

[@yaggayaggaya9918]

'If it's boring in a different way, that will be interesting too' is something Susan Sontag said to him when they went to watch a dance show. He mentions this in the Paris Review interview from the eighties.

[@mtvralinavi4677]

great talk, thank you

[@oscardiaz3311]

amazing conversation

[@chrisstratton987]

All of the prof's comments where so on point. I loved each and every one. Al's poetic instincts are different though. He is so in Ashbery's head space. imho. Thank you!!!!

[@gkeithrussell]

The two spools are Past and Present - the rope is the Present

[@kingyoutube156]

Isn't he just writing as if painting surrealism art? He wanted to do a pattern interrupt of conscious mind yo free your subconscious mind. I mean all this chat about a juxtaposition poem when he wrote so many more...our ego minds are so busy trying to pin down this poem so our higher selves walk free.

[@mmmmmmmk]

lost count of the amount of times the guy on the right cut susan off