"The New Higher" by John Ashbery

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend September 4, 2017   The New Higher   John Ashbery

You meant more than life to me. I lived through you not knowing, not knowing I was living. I learned that you called for me. I came to where you were living, up a stair. There was no one there. No one to appreciate me. The legality of it upset a chair. Many times to celebrate we were called together and where we had been there was nothing there, nothing that is anywhere. We passed obliquely, leaving no stare. When the sun was done muttering, in an optimistic way, it was time to leave that there.   Blithely passing in and out of where, blushing shyly at the tag on the overcoat near the window where the outside crept away, I put aside the there and now. Now it was time to stumble anew, blacking out when time came in the window. There was not much of it left. I laughed and put my hands shyly across your eyes. Can you see now? Yes I can see I am only in the where where the blossoming stream takes off, under your window. Go presently you said. Go from my window. I am in love with your window I cannot undermine it, I said.            Copyright © 2005 John Ashbery. About This Poem   "The New Higher" was published in Where Shall I Wander (Ecco, 2005).   John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, on July 28, 1927. He wrote more than twenty books of poetry, including Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (Viking, 1975), which received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. Ashbery was a former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and his collection A Wave (Viking, 1984) won the Academy's Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. He died on September 3, 2017.   Photo credit: Lynn Davis Poetry by Ashbery   John Ashbery: Collected Poems, 1956-1987 (Library of America, 2008) "Having a Coke with You" by Frank O'Hara "One Train May Hide Another" by Kenneth Koch "A Poem" by James Schuyler Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038