Communicating Obscurely: John Ashbery Unpacks 'These Lacustrine Cities' at PennSound

Ever wonder what was going on in John Ashbery's "These Lacustrine Cities"? Well, straight from God's lips to your ear, you can find out! Al Filreis presents PennSound podcast #18 which features John Ashbery reading the poem and following it up with a close reading/explication. A rare occurrence indeed! From Al's intro:

Rare it is that John Ashbery explains one of his poems. But, in a radio interview in 1966, he did that just. He read “These Lacustrine Cities” and then went line by line offering various sorts of explanations - paraphrase, sources for phrases and words, a sense of the process of composition. Here is a PennSound podcast, the 18th in our series, featuring this recording, which aired on WKCR. The podcast is 18 minutes long.

Go ahead and give it a listen.