John Ashbery’s nonsense is a lot more amusing than most poets’
sense. What he does well is nearly inimitable, as the mutilated
bodies of his imitators show (what he does badly nearly anyone
can do, though most poets wouldn’t even try). In the past
decade, as old age has stolen upon him, he has published over
nine-hundred pages of poetry—if there were a poetry Olympics, Ashbery
would take gold, silver, and bronze, as well as brass, antimony,
tin, and lead. He turned seventy-three this year—
when did poetry
have a more boyish septuagenarian? Will Ashbery ever grow up?

In Your Name Here
[1]

(a witty title that reminds us of all the sneaky things
he can do with language), Ashbery has started making sense. This
will come as a shock to most readers, because his poetry has
lived a long time on the subsidizing strategies of sense without
making much sense at all—
Ashbery writes poems that promise
everything and deliver nothing. He’s the original bait-and-switch
merchant, the prince of Ponzi schemes. Over and over, you’re
lured into a poem, following along dutifully in your poetry
reader’s way; then the trap door swings open and you’re dumped
into a pit of malarkey—or a pile of meringue. And that has been
the pleasure.

When Ashbery’s new poems mean, this is the sort of meaning they
make:

Terminal

Didn’t you get my card?

We none of us, you see, knew we were coming