Quiz#3
Ashbury’s quotable lines
Q:
Identify the poem in each case.
1.
A little girl with scarlet
enameled fingernails
2.
Asks me what time it is—evidently
that's a toy wristwatch
3.
She's wearing, for fun. And it is fun to wear other
4.
Odd things, like this briar pipe
and tweed coat
5.
Like date-colored sierras with
the lines of seams
6.
Sketched in and plunging now and
then into unfathomable
7.
Valleys that can't be deduced by
the shape of the person
8.
Sitting inside it—me, and just as
our way is flat across
9.
Dales and gulches, as though our
train were a pencil
10. Guided
by a ruler held against a photomural of the Alps
11. We
both come to see distance as something unofficial
12. And
impersonal yet not without its curious justification
13. Like
the time of a stopped watch—right twice a day.
14. Only
the wait in stations is vague and
15. Dimensionless,
like oneself. How do they decide how
much
16. Time
to spend in each? One beings to suspect
there's no
17. Rule
or that it's applied haphazardly.
18. Sadness
of the faces of children on the platform,
19. Concern
of the grownups for connections, for the chances
20. Of
getting a taxi, since these have no timetable.
21. You
get one if you can find one though in principle
22. You
can always find one, but the segment of chance
23. In
the circle of certainty is what gives these leaning
24. Tower of Pisa
25. Impatience,
banking forward into the wind.
26. In
short any stop before the final one creates
27. Clouds
of anxiety, of sad, regretful impatience
28. With
ourselves, our lives, the way we have been dealing
29. With
other people up until now. Why couldn't
30. We
have been more considerate? These
figures leaving
31. The
platform or waiting to board the train are my brothers
32. In
a way that really wants to tell me whey there is so little
33. Panic
and disorder in the world, and so much unhappiness.
34. If
I were to get down now to stretch, take a few steps
35. In
the wearying and world-weary clouds of steam like great
36. White
apples, might I just through proximity and aping
37. Of
postures and attitudes communicate this concern of mine
38. To
them? That their jagged attitudes
correspond to mine,
39. That
their beefing strikes answering silver bells within
40. My
own chest, and that I know, as they do, how the last
41. Stop
is the most anxious one of all, though it means
42. Getting
home at last, to the pleasures and dissatisfactions of home?
43. It's
as though a visible chorus called up the different
44. Stages
of the journey, singing about them and being them:
45. Not
the people in the station, not the child opposite me
46. With
currant fingernails, but the windows, seen through,
47. Reflecting
imperfectly, ruthlessly splitting open the bluish
48. Vague
landscape like a zipper. Each voice has
its own
49. Descending
scale to put one in one's place at every stage;
50. One
need never not know where one is
51. Unless
one give up listening, sleeping, approaching a small
52. Western
town that is nothing but a windmill.
Then
53. The
great fury of the end can drop as the solo
54. Voices
tell about it, wreathing it somehow with an aura
55. Of
good fortune and colossal welcomes from the mayor and
56. Citizens'
committees tossing their hats into the air.
57. To
hear them singing you'd think it had already happened
58. And
we had focused back on the furniture of the air.
59. Sitting between the sea and the
buildings
60. He enjoyed painting the sea’s
portrait.
61. But just as children imagine a
prayer
62. Is merely silence, he expected his
subject
63. To rush up the sand, and, seizing a
brush,
64. Plaster its own portrait on the
canvas.
65. So there was never any paint on his
canvas
66. Until the people who lived in the
buildings
67. Put him to work: “Try using the
brush
68. As a means to an end. Select, for a
portrait,
69. Something less angry and large, and
more subject
70. To a painter’s moods, or, perhaps,
to a prayer.”
71. How could he explain to them his
prayer
72. That nature, not art, might usurp
the canvas?
73. He chose his wife for a new subject,
74. Making her vast, like ruined
buildings,
75. As if, forgetting itself, the
portrait
76. Had expressed itself without a
brush.
77. Slightly encouraged, he dipped his
brush
78. In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt
prayer:
79. “My soul, when I paint this next
portrait
80. Let it be you who wrecks the
canvas.”
81. The news spread like wildfire
through the buildings:
82. He had gone back to the sea for his
subject.
83. Imagine a painter crucified by his
subject!
84. Too exhausted even to lift his
brush,
85. He provoked some artists leaning
from the buildings
86. To malicious mirth: “We haven’t a
prayer
87. Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,
88. Or getting the sea to sit for a
portrait!”
89. Others declared it a self-portrait.
90. Finally all indications of a subject
91. Began to fade, leaving the canvas
92. Perfectly white. He put down the
brush.
93. At once a howl, that was also a
prayer,
94. Arose from the overcrowded
buildings.
95. They tossed him, the portrait, from
the tallest of the buildings;
96. And the sea devoured the canvas and
the brush
97. As though his subject had decided to
remain a prayer.
Answer Key
Quiz#3
1-58-
Melodic Train
59-97-
The painter
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