(Continued from https://ethicaldative.com/2021/10/31/quest-to-quell-the-demotic/)
Dominic Sixtus Venable Regulus bin Pugh-Fuchs, Fourteenth Montmorency, inaugurated the Lunation Gala. A zillion needles of light shafted the fête. Gentlepersons in radiant attire milled among eureka palms. Tables bulged with platters of candied fungi, trayed chalices of inebriant. Couples, triples, quadruples coalesced and dispersed in recombinant chat groups.
The Posse of Matrons, stars of the night, beamed on the dais, bussing well-wishers, miming vanity rituals with period kit, gesturing reciprocation to gallant toasts flung from across the vast hall. They lolled by rank on Watteau-inspired settees draped with 3D-printed shot silks: Astrid bint Wanda, Brilliant Emeritus; Lavendar Larchmont, Brilliant; Dido Harding, Brilliant; Topeka Toombs, Medallion; Jocasta Montmorency, Medallion; Lambent Pym, Pippa Trelawney, Talulah Pierpont, Worth Arbuthnot, Legends. (Annunziata D’Avenant, Legend, had accompanied Philemon to the Riviera, so could not be present for the shot.)
In exquisite disguise Claw Hammer perambulated, dispensing languid body language and genial nods. From a hermetic chamber Siddhartha Huff monitored his doppelgänger on myriad screens. Sidd had drilled his minion in the sequence to be played out: When Astrid brandishes the Escutcheon, a third fanfare will sound. A hush will ensue. Stand on the mark. Intone the spiel. Aim the ancient device. Click it. Bow to the Posse. Fade gracefully to shadow as the crescendo of huzzahs engulfs the dais.
(c) 2021 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
Poetic Researches
Is the soul our dark matter — pervasive but undetectable by any instrument we possess? If there’s a part of me that isn’t glia, neurons, and enzymes, it has found a modicum of rest in the revelation that John Ashbery’s poetry was not meant by him to make sense. I’ve feared that much poetry is a riddle that I’m not up to cracking. That I haven’t subjected the poem sufficiently to the persistent hard, informed reading necessary to derive the connections that the poet has made, the arc the poem has traversed. That I’ve jousted with the poem and it has unhorsed me. Much of the fare in Poetry magazine that I peruse now defeats my understanding, is numbingly hermetic. Those are phrases I borrow from Peter Schjeldahl; he applies them to the late paintings of Kandinsky.
I read now that Ashbery was one of our greats (died 2017 at 90); that many poets imitate him now; but that not all are as good at what he did as he was. I’ve no quarrel with his reputation. I’ve glanced at him over the years as if at a sculpture on a Gothic cathedral so lofty only steeplejacks can see it.
This revelation is liberating. Last night (November 12, 2021) for the first time I read “The Tennis Court Oath” with enjoyment. I gave in to it, as it were. It didn’t sweep me off my feet, like certain poems of Auden. It would take yet more readings for me to quote a single phrase (verse?) of it from memory: As Ashbery has written… But it was slyly amusing. It gave nonsensical pleasure. Like a nursery rhyme can do? I’m not sure about that comparison, but it sprang to mind as I flash on the pleasure I got at an early age from “The Owl and the Pussycat” and its runcible spoon. I retain that spoon. No idea what kind of spoon it is. Perhaps that’s my dawning way of approaching some of this spikey verse I read: It’s runcible. Or maybe sporkish.
(c) 2021 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved