Mountainous: Kent Johnson's 'Into the Heat-Forged Air'

At the New York School Poets blog: Andrew Epstein responds to David Gorin's essay at the Boston Review on Dana Ward with a follow-up note that Kent Johnson also had a take on Ashbery's "Into the Dusk-Charged Air":

Here’s another interesting example of the afterlife of that particular poem that might be of interest: Kent Johnson‘s poem “Into the Heat-Forged Air,” which appeared in Chicago Review in 2008 and also in Johnson’s book Homage to the Last Avant-Garde.

Johnson’s poem — balanced somewhere along the fine line between parody and homage, I suppose — is much more closely tied to Ashbery’s original poem than Ward’s: it follows the same pattern and form, and appears to be the same length as Ashbery’s. However, instead of naming rivers, Johnson lists mountains. Lots and lots of mountains. Here are the opening lines:

Far from the Pirin, the pointy Appenines plummet toward the sea. The grey and mauve Virungas undulate pleasantly, much like The Darlings in their slumber. Chuckling nomads make lean-tos Within the Schwatka. Troop carriers rust their wheels On the Taurus, and jackals roam The Toba Kakar. The Sentinel Range is white with Dust, as are the peaks of the Ahaggar, covered in Dust. The Tibetsi are grey and dry as bone.

Epstein has also graciously posted the full poem.