Small serendipitous moment:
For a number of years, I had been referring to a quote from John
Ashbery about three great themes of poetry - love, death and the
weather. I knew I had it slightly wrong, and also knew I had read it
in something I had around and about me at one stage of my life. I also
thought it had been lost when I had maybe lent it to someone and a
fire had destroyed a lot of their papers. There was nary a reference
to it via online or library search,etc. I even started to think I'd
dreamed it up.
Well, blow me down, here I am with it before me. The result of a huge
cleanout. It's in a supplement to an old magazine that our 'national
broadcaster', the ABC, used to publish, called '24 Hours'. Any Aussies
remember this wee journal? But that's why the quote never turns up in
an online search.
And the quote - from an interview with JA conducted by Peter Rose at
the Melbourne Writers Festival in 1992 - 'Well, I am preoccupied with
the great themes: death, love, the weather.' And he elaborates a
little further, on the weather.
So, a small thing, but I now have it. As, among other things, I am
giving a lecture on Ashbery this semester, I am happy to have a source
for quotes/elaborations that's not always used. But happier to have
this before me - so I know I slightly misremembered it, but that it
was not a complete figment.
Misremembering can be a good thing. But re-membering this one is as
good.
__________________________
Jill Jones
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website: www.jilljones.com.au
blog: rubystreet.blogspot.com
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