Dear Sir,
The two similes from The Double Dream of Spring that I contrasted in my reply to Grevel Lindop (PNR 70) were ingeniously misprinted as one, to the mystification, I'd imagine, of anyone following my argument. The compositor's eye (memories of Arden Shakespeare introductions!) has jumped from 'years' in the first to the same word in the second, missing out the intervening words and punctuation. I'd be very unhappy to have reinforced anyone in the belief that Ashbery's poetry is gibberish! The relevant sentences should have read: Take these two similes, for example, from The Double Dream of Spring: 'A corresponding deterioration of moral values, punctuated / By acts of corporate vandalism every five years, / Like a bunch of violets pinned to a dress'; 'These were moments, years, / Solid with reality, faces, namable events, kisses, heroic acts, / But like the friendly beginning of a geometrical progression / Not too reassuring, as though meaning could be cast aside some day / When it had been outgrown.' I find one unintelligible, the other inexhaustibly fascinating, which is what reading Ashbery is like.
Yours etc,
James Keery