John wrote: Mike makes a strong case, a la reader-response
theory, that a poem is what the reader makes of it, which
may be very different, indeed, from whatever the poet intended.
Paradoxes and Oxymorons By John Ashbery
This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level. Look at it talking to you. You look out a window Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don't have it. You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.
The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot. What's a plain level? It is that and other things, Bringing a system of them into play. Play? Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be
A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern, As in the division of grace these long August days Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know It gets lost in the stream and chatter of typewriters.
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