Houseboat Days (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: John Ashbery
- First Published: 1976
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Life, philosophy of, Boats or boating, Rain
The Poem
“Houseboat Days” is a free-verse lyric divided into two irregular stanzas, one of thirty-nine lines and one of twenty-nine. The title “Houseboat Days” comes from a 1929 National Geographic article by Florence H. Morden, “Houseboat Days in the Vale of Kashmir,” a phrase that seems to mingle the exotic with the ordinary.
“Houseboat Days” begins with an unattributed quotation, shifting abruptly from someone speaking, apparently in the immediate present, to a sentence placing that immediacy in the past on “that day.” “Day” echoes the...
[The entire page is 1406 words long]
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