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Reading 24: Frou-frou foxes in Midsummer Fires
Another season, proposing a name and distant resolution. And, like the wind, all attention. That was the opening line from John Ashbery’s poem ‘The Ivory Tower’, taken from his 1981 collection, Shadow Train. I’d been avoiding that particular collection for years, put off by its continued use of quatrains, the most hideous of poetic forms,…
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Reading 13: On summers, real and imagined
I am cold, and I want to remember a warmer time. After an unusually warm December, it seems the winter has finally caught up with us. I’ve always seen myself as someone sitting in the cold, imagining countries in the sun. I am most definitely the ‘summer’ type.I think some of my most formative moments…