The Poems of John Ashbery for New Readers by Thomas Devaney

On John Ashbery's poem "Soonest Mended" and the difficulties I first had on reading Ashbery. Introduction for ENG 289 Contemporary Poetry Haverford College March 23, 2020
I give a close reading of the passage:
Happy Hooligan in his rusted green automobile
Came plowing down the course, just to make sure everything was O.K.,
Only by that time we were in another chapter and confused
About how to receive this latest piece of information.
Was it information? Weren’t we rather acting this out
For someone else’s benefit, thoughts in a mind
With room enough and to spare for our little problems (so they began to seem),
Our daily quandary about food and the rent and bills to be paid?
To reduce all this to a small variant,
To step free at last, minuscule on the gigantic plateau-
This was our ambition: to be small and clear and free.
Devaney (quote from video): "Every time I teach Ashbery I think how long it took me to get there with the poems. What I realized now, it wasn’t one of those facile Left Brain (analytical) Vs Right Brain (artist) kind of thinking. But it was thinking in another way. Thinking in the ways in which we actually think, whole brain, whole body, whole life kind of thinking."
LINK to John Ashbery's "Soonest Mended" -- www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...
The title is a shortened proverb: “Least Said, Soonest Mended.” A young John Ashbery heard it said by his strict grandparents, and he learned to keep things to himself.
For more on Thomas Devaney see: www.thomasdevaney.net/

[@thomasdevaney9295]

Wakefulness was published in 1988 in the video I indicate another date. Also, I was first reading Ashbery more closely in the spring 1997 not 1998.