[New-Poetry] Ashes, ashes, we all fall down

[Robin Hamilton]

As part of National Too Much Poetry Month, NewPo is pleased to offer its first Ashbery quiz.
  Which of the following descriptions best captures the above poem's theme?  


  A) A poem must not mean but be.  

          Archibald Macleish, "Ars Poetica"  [verbatim]


  B) The poet imagines himself dying, and then dead, enclosed in a coffin from which his spirit has departed.

          Poe, anyone?


  C)  Life is a ravishing disappointment, most of the time, but oh well.

          Keats, "Ode to a Postmodernist Urn"


  D)  Getting old is a real bitch, but the supreme fiction never dies.

          Postumous Wallace Stevens


  E)  Even our closest friendships are riddled with rumors, missed connections, and contradictory memories.


          W.H.Auden.  Or possibly Dana Gioia

  RH
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