Portrait In A Convex Mirror

Turns out that John Ashbery's readings, as public events, are as eccentric and entertaining as his poetry:

"When Ashbery finished, his way had to be cleared once again. While Ashbery’s friend pushed his wheelchair, a photographer wearing multiple complex cameras duckwalked backwards, snapping pictures as if the poet were a runway model. It took me at least five minutes to round the corner to the exit, where the photographer stood cursing at Ashbery’s companion. 'I’m a fucking professional, I cleared it with his publicist, and he takes a swing at me?' Ashbery’s diminutive friend, who looked and dressed remarkably like Curly of The Three Stooges, simply stared at the photographer, who was a foot taller than he was. The friend’s crewcut head and flat eyes radiated menace as he pushed the elevator button to take Ashbery to the reception upstairs. The photographer stormed out onto the street."

Goodbye To All That

Donald Hall, 84, looks back at some of his most memorable poetry readings:

"When I was young, I could project, and now without a microphone I can’t be heard in the tenth row. It’s not only the debility of age. One’s range is diminished by habitual use of microphones. (When stage actors spend twenty years making movies, they are inaudible when they return to Broadway or the West End.) But there are advantages to artificial enhancement. There’s a poem in which I moo like a cow. Cows’ lungs are bigger than ours. I approach the microphone intimately, and softly but audibly moo as long as a cow moos. Proximity to the microphone saves my wind as I croon, mm-mmm-mmmmm-mmmmmmmm-ugghwanchhh. My friends say it’s the best line I’ve ever written."