Interesting People of Newfoundland (by John Ashbery)

Interesting People of Newfoundland (by John Ashbery)

Original Text
John Ashbery, Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems (New York: HarperCollins Publishers/Ecco, 2007). This poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from the winning volume on the International Shortlist 2001).
1Newfoundland is, or was, full of interesting people.
2Like Larry, who would make a fool of himself on street corners
3for a nickel. There was the Russian who called himself
4the Grand Duke, and who was said to be a real duke from somewhere,
5and the woman who frequently accompanied him on his rounds.
6Doc Hanks, the sawbones, was a real good surgeon
7when he wasn’t completely drunk, which was most of the time.
8When only half drunk he could perform decent cranial surgery.
9There was the blind man who never said anything
10but produced spectral sounds on a musical saw.
11There was Walsh’s, with its fancy grocery department.
12What a treat when Mother or Father
13would take us down there, skidding over slippery snow
14and ice, to be rewarded with a rare fig from somewhere.
15They had teas from every country you could imagine
16and hard little cakes from Scotland, rare sherries
17and Madeiras to reward the aunts and uncles who came dancing.
18On summer evenings in the eternal light it was a joy
19just to be there and think. We took long rides
20into the countryside, but were always stopped by some bog or other.
21Then it was time to return home, which was OK with everybody,
22each of them having discovered he or she could use a little shuteye.
23In short there was a higher per capita percentage of interesting people
24there than almost anywhere on earth, but the population was small,
25which meant not too many interesting people. But for all that
26we loved each other and had interesting times
27picking each other’s brain and drying nets on the wooden docks.
28Always some more of us would come along. It is in the place
29in the world in complete beauty, as none can gainsay,
30I declare, and strong frontiers to collide with.
31Worship of the chthonic powers may well happen there
32but is seldom in evidence. We loved that too,
33as we were a part of all that happened there, the evil and the good
34and all the shades in between, happy to pipe up at roll call
35or compete in the spelling bees. It was too much of a good thing
36but at least it’s over now. They are making a pageant out of it,
37one of them told me. It’s coming to a theater near you.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011