News at Eleven: These forms are suited to his moods

of languor and meandering, open-ended speculation. ("But I digress," [John] Ashbery apologizes at one point, as if he ever did anything else!) Yet his work is permeated by a sense of urgency. He writes to outpace his last thought, refusing to rest in it, proceeding at a rate that is not hurried but dogged, in it for the long haul.

What keeps him going?

from The New York Times: 'But I Digress'

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