This was a decent collection of poetry from John Ashbery's youthful days. Some poems are a near miss, but others hold the presence of his form and skill by taking you along and guiding you in your perceptions, thoughts, and insinuations. A malleable sense of discovery exists with this book and it holds some of its own power from it.

3.5 stars. ( )

SOME TREES OUT OF A HUGE FOREST

Used Poem: "Some Trees" by John Ashbery
The "Mesostomatic" Poem I got using the program:

Each neighBor
by spEech were
Arranging
yoU and I
in whaT performance
not merelY chance

means sOmething
Filled with

Canvas
puzzling ligHt
And being there
and moviNg our days
suCh reticence
these sEem defense.

I chose option A in this assignment because the idea of being able to create as many "automatic poems" as you would like to with the aid of a computer program piqued my curiosity. I have to admit that I had to try several times to obtain a poem without errors from the selected text, but my pleasure with the final result made up for all the effort. I had great fun too!
I finally selected the poem "Some Trees" by Ashbery, firstly because I was deeply impressed by its close reading and then because I thought that it was an appropriate poem to give further meaning to the concept of chance. Because in this aleatory process creating the Mesostic poem, chance has a great deal of importance, but at the same time, adding the wing words and writing the spine, you can somehow unconsciously interfere with the result.
As the branches of the trees in Ashbery's poem, which arrange by chance to meet and dance together, or the lovely accidental side of any relationship, in this new reduced poem, I find a freshly and even liberating sense in the words. They become the highest reality.
Trying to do a close reading of the poem, I'd say that for me it talks about meetings. Meetings in the general sense, two lovers, an artist and a new idea, a reader and a poem, a subtle and elegant courtship, any kind of meeting, of getting to know something or someone who didn't exist before. Meetings which may seem to be casual or even meaningless, but at the same time, they have a reason to be, they are performed, they exist so we (the readers, the lovers, or both!) can move forward, overcoming any formal and conventional obstacle which might be found on their way and becoming something completely different in the process.
And out of all the huge forest of words, the program and I chose only some of them, so chance creates a new quality, a new interpretation for these words, there is an accidental intention which somehow gives homage to Ashbery's poem, and why not, it creates new and unadulterated beauty out of it. ( )