In Memoriam: John Ash
Like a thornbush or a cloud...
by
Bronwyn Mills
|
My Poetry
Because they didn’t get it, and wanted to be polite, critics used to call my poetry “experimental.” This always puzzled me. Was I some kind of scientist? Was I planning to clone Mallarmé or an ox? What did they mean? Uh. I always thought it was just my heart talking about the things I loved and hated, hated aud loved, like Scriabin, who was a very strange person, or Gesualdo, who killed someone on a swing and got away with it. In truth, I care little about either of these composers. Ah, sadness and freedom! How To Use This Book It would be best to read it sitting down, but it doesn’t matter much where you are. You could be sitting at your desk or on a rock by a fast-flowing stream, or even on the steps of a temple, or in the dignified plaza of a major center of finance. You could also read it standing up, but do not, on any account, read it while walking around: you might fall into a hole or walk into a tree. Reading the book in moving vehicles is permitted, providing you are not the one doing the driving. -- And really the whole purpose of the book is to get you moving, to persuade you to leave your comfortable room, urged on by great gusts of enthusiasm and expectancy, and to climb to the top of mountains or to descend into abyssal valleys, and think thoughts that wouldn’t normally occur to you even if they are only on the lines of: “Help! I am miles from anywhere, menaced by a rabid dog, and how will I get back to my hotel by nightfall?” Although it disavows masochistic rigor, the book thinks this might not be all bad. It is opposed to all forms of complacency and routine, and stale preconceptions are anathema to it. It dislikes strict meter, and the idea that the poet is inevitably agonized. Of course, it is possible that in some places you will have horrible experiences, but in others you will be equally sure to find radiance and mystery, unless you happen to be the kind of dunderhead who wants everything “abroad” to be a repetition, as if travel consisted merely of walking out of one living-room into another, and then another and another. What a fucking nightmare! The book abhors this, and would probably advise you to live in a bunker, if that is your attitude, but if the book is in your hand, if you are reading it while sitting or standing or relaxing in a moving vehicle, then you cannot be such a fatuous person. You have already decided that you want to be ASTONISHED, DAZZLED and CONFUSED. You are already, in some sense, an avant-garde poet, and the book will go with you all the way, saying in Miltonic tones: “Behold!”, and again: “Be bold! This destination with a name you can’t pronounce may turn out to be an iniquitous dump, but that won’t kill you will it? And it may be wonderful, and you may fall in love with the light on a stone at evening.” And so on. As you are using the book you may sometimes feel that the book is using you. This is normal. You must sometimes feel this way about your friends, and, rest assured, the book is your friend. It will give you accurate directions, but thinks it might sometimes be useful if you got lost like a child in a dark forest. In this way, you will invite kindness and sympathy, and suddenly a new path will emerge like a hoopoe from a ruined tower, and you will encounter joy in the form of a young woman gathering herbs. Or . . . But who knows what you will encounter? Whatever it is, the book urges you, with all its heart, to welcome it. There are yellow and brown signs along the way, except where there are none. - Both poems by John Ash, from To the City |
Early evening, the phone in my Beyoğlu apartment rang. It was Ash: "Hello, John."
"Hello, Bron-wen. I've just written a po-em," he enunciated in his mellifluous British accent, "Would you like to hear it?"
"Yes. Yes, of course." Mind, our first meeting was not auspicious: as I noted in my journal, upon meeting some of my soon-to-be colleagues at Kadir Has University, "...met some more of the characters who have made this place their home—a slender, disgruntled poet, John Ash." As I recall, he was cross and progressively blotto. Then on day, he rang me up: "This is John Ash. Would you like to buy some rugs?"
I set off to visit him and his rugs in his apartment at the Tünel end of Istiklal, a street converted into shopping promenade and trolleyway on the Beyoğlu side of the city near the Galata tower. Ash lived in a seventh floor walkup. Huffing and puffing, I reached his door after being rung in at the bottom and just as, from a cami nearby, a remarkably grating sunset call to prayer began.
I greeted Ash with my hands over my ears. "Good grief! That man has an awful voice!"
"Yes, but this muezzin alternates with another whose voice is like an angel's," Ash leaned down to give me a greeting peck on my cheek. Always in a jacket, he was paper thin and exuded a faint eau de rakı. His apartment was sparsely furnished with what was once no doubt new but, now, a little worn: a purple sofa moderne, a greyish stuffed chair, also moderne, coffee table, in a window alcove a built in desk with a lackluster view—another building across the way—books piled up, a bottle of rakı to one side of his desk chair. Later, when it was his turn to host us, it accomodated our whole writing group.
John's kitchen stretched along a farther wall—stove, fridge, shelves. And music--
"Mahler?"
"Oh, no, Mahler never wrote opera. That's the Bassarids—Henke. Here, I'll turn it off." Ash leaned over and pushed a button on his DVD player. I never did understand Ash's fondness for the more atonal classical music— "But you must listen to this—" He slipped in another DVD.
A husky voice, mournful, with all those Turkish half tones which allow Turks to appreciate jazz so much…the resonant twanging of the saz, a double stringed instrument from the East…gidiyorum bu şehirden… "It's Sezen Aksu. It means, 'We must leave this city…never to see it again…'" Ash explained. "She is referring to the Population Exchange…"
"Not Atatürk's finest hour," I remarked.
He nodded.
When we agreed on a price for two rugs, one a very large that would cover my rther grim linoleum tiled living room floor, Ash agreed to bring them over: I gave him directions. "—Dede Paşa Sokak (street) and just down from the Spoonmaker's Tomb..."
"Now, are you hungry?" without waiting for my answer, he continued, "We can go to our place near the Pera Palace, Asmalı Cavit. Or we could go sit at the bar in the Pera. You know, the same hotel where Christie wrote about Poirot."
Somehow that visit made way for our becoming friends. Once settled into Kadir Has, itself of interest as it was housed in a familiar Istanbul landmark along the Golden Horn, an old tobacco factory, I tagged along with one of his "At Your Doorstep" tours for students who were, oddly, not so familiar with the city, I remember his triumph at showing us the oldest library in Istanbul with its rare book of poetry by Suleiman the Magnificent, a book of prophecies from Al Andalus, and other treasures. As we became more friendly, he recommended books on his favourite subject, the Byzantines, and gave me a book which I still treasure, a translation of The Noise of Time, a collection of short stories by Osip Mandelstam. We travelled together, he as freebie travel guide; and I as anxious to learn as any of his students. He also introduced me to our mutually admired rug dealer, a lovely man (for in those days everyone had a rug dealer in Istanbul) and to Layla, a wild and lovely woman who traveled all over the place. Once a teacher, Layla exuded grace and pleasure. Finally, he gave me some of his books--poetry and his travel writing about Turkey and its Byzantine past, of which he was both enamoured and well-informed—and Ash was the one who invited me to join our Istanbul English language writers' group. While he was often merciless in his critiques of others, I was somehow spared his most withering criticisms. When, after reading several sections of the novel I was working on at the time, he commented, "Well, Bron-wen, you've become a novelist," how I treasured that praise!
I still have not read enough of his poetry. Despite being in that writing group with him and also being called upon to listen to his "po-ems", hot off the press, we rarely discussed his work at great length. In the group, he was, however, accurate but free with his criticism of the work of others—especially one vain little fellow, muscles bulging from working out, who wrote rather dreary fantasy and suffered no criticism. Afterwards, Ash would roll his eyes, "Oh, V—!" but tactfully for him, he went no further. His critiques were carefully measured for another fellow's work which was more nuanced, but often flat—"Well, I liked first one..."—but more and much more thoughtful for yet another, our boss, whose work sparked both our interest. As for others, who sometimes wandered in, they tended not to stay for long.
To the City was published around the time I joined the university where we taught. Looking back, those two introductory poems (above) were so Ash, and so good. Instead of the lugubrious introduction that many books, poetry and prose, offer readers, these two poems, brilliantly tongue-in-cheek like Ash himself, tell the reader what John's poetry was like and what his ideas about writing actually were. No need for a long dissertation; he is simply John, in "... my heart...talking about things I loved and hated..." And in that, I am reminded of what Kamau Brathwaite once said when I expressed surprise at his admiration of T.S. Eliot: "He taught us that we could write in a conversational voice." With Ash's work, it was the music of English language conversation. No "strict meter," no self-indulgent, "poet...inevitably agonized." Though it took a bit to get beneath John's facile veneer of sophisticated banter which he first employed with others to that frank invitation to "kindness and sympathy," that invitation was genuinely John as well.
But he also did not like to be pinned down. He writes, in Part II of To the City,
"Hello, Bron-wen. I've just written a po-em," he enunciated in his mellifluous British accent, "Would you like to hear it?"
"Yes. Yes, of course." Mind, our first meeting was not auspicious: as I noted in my journal, upon meeting some of my soon-to-be colleagues at Kadir Has University, "...met some more of the characters who have made this place their home—a slender, disgruntled poet, John Ash." As I recall, he was cross and progressively blotto. Then on day, he rang me up: "This is John Ash. Would you like to buy some rugs?"
I set off to visit him and his rugs in his apartment at the Tünel end of Istiklal, a street converted into shopping promenade and trolleyway on the Beyoğlu side of the city near the Galata tower. Ash lived in a seventh floor walkup. Huffing and puffing, I reached his door after being rung in at the bottom and just as, from a cami nearby, a remarkably grating sunset call to prayer began.
I greeted Ash with my hands over my ears. "Good grief! That man has an awful voice!"
"Yes, but this muezzin alternates with another whose voice is like an angel's," Ash leaned down to give me a greeting peck on my cheek. Always in a jacket, he was paper thin and exuded a faint eau de rakı. His apartment was sparsely furnished with what was once no doubt new but, now, a little worn: a purple sofa moderne, a greyish stuffed chair, also moderne, coffee table, in a window alcove a built in desk with a lackluster view—another building across the way—books piled up, a bottle of rakı to one side of his desk chair. Later, when it was his turn to host us, it accomodated our whole writing group.
John's kitchen stretched along a farther wall—stove, fridge, shelves. And music--
"Mahler?"
"Oh, no, Mahler never wrote opera. That's the Bassarids—Henke. Here, I'll turn it off." Ash leaned over and pushed a button on his DVD player. I never did understand Ash's fondness for the more atonal classical music— "But you must listen to this—" He slipped in another DVD.
A husky voice, mournful, with all those Turkish half tones which allow Turks to appreciate jazz so much…the resonant twanging of the saz, a double stringed instrument from the East…gidiyorum bu şehirden… "It's Sezen Aksu. It means, 'We must leave this city…never to see it again…'" Ash explained. "She is referring to the Population Exchange…"
"Not Atatürk's finest hour," I remarked.
He nodded.
When we agreed on a price for two rugs, one a very large that would cover my rther grim linoleum tiled living room floor, Ash agreed to bring them over: I gave him directions. "—Dede Paşa Sokak (street) and just down from the Spoonmaker's Tomb..."
"Now, are you hungry?" without waiting for my answer, he continued, "We can go to our place near the Pera Palace, Asmalı Cavit. Or we could go sit at the bar in the Pera. You know, the same hotel where Christie wrote about Poirot."
Somehow that visit made way for our becoming friends. Once settled into Kadir Has, itself of interest as it was housed in a familiar Istanbul landmark along the Golden Horn, an old tobacco factory, I tagged along with one of his "At Your Doorstep" tours for students who were, oddly, not so familiar with the city, I remember his triumph at showing us the oldest library in Istanbul with its rare book of poetry by Suleiman the Magnificent, a book of prophecies from Al Andalus, and other treasures. As we became more friendly, he recommended books on his favourite subject, the Byzantines, and gave me a book which I still treasure, a translation of The Noise of Time, a collection of short stories by Osip Mandelstam. We travelled together, he as freebie travel guide; and I as anxious to learn as any of his students. He also introduced me to our mutually admired rug dealer, a lovely man (for in those days everyone had a rug dealer in Istanbul) and to Layla, a wild and lovely woman who traveled all over the place. Once a teacher, Layla exuded grace and pleasure. Finally, he gave me some of his books--poetry and his travel writing about Turkey and its Byzantine past, of which he was both enamoured and well-informed—and Ash was the one who invited me to join our Istanbul English language writers' group. While he was often merciless in his critiques of others, I was somehow spared his most withering criticisms. When, after reading several sections of the novel I was working on at the time, he commented, "Well, Bron-wen, you've become a novelist," how I treasured that praise!
I still have not read enough of his poetry. Despite being in that writing group with him and also being called upon to listen to his "po-ems", hot off the press, we rarely discussed his work at great length. In the group, he was, however, accurate but free with his criticism of the work of others—especially one vain little fellow, muscles bulging from working out, who wrote rather dreary fantasy and suffered no criticism. Afterwards, Ash would roll his eyes, "Oh, V—!" but tactfully for him, he went no further. His critiques were carefully measured for another fellow's work which was more nuanced, but often flat—"Well, I liked first one..."—but more and much more thoughtful for yet another, our boss, whose work sparked both our interest. As for others, who sometimes wandered in, they tended not to stay for long.
To the City was published around the time I joined the university where we taught. Looking back, those two introductory poems (above) were so Ash, and so good. Instead of the lugubrious introduction that many books, poetry and prose, offer readers, these two poems, brilliantly tongue-in-cheek like Ash himself, tell the reader what John's poetry was like and what his ideas about writing actually were. No need for a long dissertation; he is simply John, in "... my heart...talking about things I loved and hated..." And in that, I am reminded of what Kamau Brathwaite once said when I expressed surprise at his admiration of T.S. Eliot: "He taught us that we could write in a conversational voice." With Ash's work, it was the music of English language conversation. No "strict meter," no self-indulgent, "poet...inevitably agonized." Though it took a bit to get beneath John's facile veneer of sophisticated banter which he first employed with others to that frank invitation to "kindness and sympathy," that invitation was genuinely John as well.
But he also did not like to be pinned down. He writes, in Part II of To the City,
|
The Long Poem
For some weeks now I have wanted to write a long poem, But all I have produced are short poems, or poems Of moderte length, nothing that rolls on to the horizon, And then plunges over it liike a Niagara or an Iguassu. Yes, it should be like a river! But where will I find its source? In an idea or a word? Of course, it would be naïve To assume that it has to be about something, but I fear I have no talent for grand abstractions. Even the Parthenon Bores me: it is too perfectly Euclidean, if that is the right word. So, long poem, when will you come tripping along the street like A beautiful girl in a red raincoat? You are surely a heartless lover. |
—and then he follows up with a compromise, typically Ash: a 5 page poem with 16 short verse stanzas. The subject? Beds. Yes, beds. For example,
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4
The bed is warm and dry In the sense of witty and ironic. |
Or,
|
13
The bed is in love, but not with me. The object Of its love is an unattainable ideal of obscure, And fabulous origins. Splenetic humors Will be the result: breadcrumbs, spittle... |
He finishes off the poem with a stanza of complete doggerel, as if to say, "so there!" Or, "Take that, Long Poem!" Or, finally, "so much for Niagra, for Iguassu!"
|
16
O go to sleep my bed. Forget the things I said, And, dear, do not be led Into the lands of the dead, But sleep without dread. Glide, bed, as on a sled. - "The Long Poem" and these short excerpts from To the City, 23 -28.) |
He was, for lack of a better word, wry. He could be funny, ironic, mockingly hammy... More often, he would make a remark, an understatement, and leave it hanging till the situation's irony or humour hit you. I remember meeting him, sometimes alone and sometimes with others, for after-work drinks at the Buyuk Londres hotel near Istiklal. It was he who first introduced me to the place, a Kemalist establishment with pictures of Atatürk on all the walls, and a collection of old ceramic stoves ubiquitously displayed. A comfortable lobby and a discreet bar towards the back of the room.
That first time, John sat me down near a window. Deliberately there, I suspect. Someone coughed behind me and I turned around. But there was nothing but the drawn curtains and that window.
John snickered. "That's the parrot—"
"Parrot?"
"Yes., there's a parrot behind the curtains. The parrot has learned to imitate a smoker's cough." John lit up a cigarette, and as if on cue, from behind the curtain came a whopper of a smoker's cough, even more elaborate than the first.
I later learned that the bird also had a talent for imitating the shriek of car alarms and a few odd songs in Turkish.
And there was that kindness. I remember his concern for the street children of Istanbul. These children, who were often sent by their parents from the East to Istanbul to survive on their own, and, at best, perhaps to send some money home—a number of them turned to sniffing glue. You would see them with a paper bag scrunched at one end held to their faces, inhaling the fumes which would get them high and destroy their brains in a matter of a only a very few years. There was one boy who would beg near John's house—"So far, no glue sniffing, thank god!" John would remark, as he helped the boy with some change. "I'd take him in, but then everyone would think I was a pederast. Imagine! Who would want to have sex with a child?" He knew the prejudicial view many held of gay men; for John was gay—indeed, so too, he insisted, was his own father, closeted his entire life.
That first time, John sat me down near a window. Deliberately there, I suspect. Someone coughed behind me and I turned around. But there was nothing but the drawn curtains and that window.
John snickered. "That's the parrot—"
"Parrot?"
"Yes., there's a parrot behind the curtains. The parrot has learned to imitate a smoker's cough." John lit up a cigarette, and as if on cue, from behind the curtain came a whopper of a smoker's cough, even more elaborate than the first.
I later learned that the bird also had a talent for imitating the shriek of car alarms and a few odd songs in Turkish.
And there was that kindness. I remember his concern for the street children of Istanbul. These children, who were often sent by their parents from the East to Istanbul to survive on their own, and, at best, perhaps to send some money home—a number of them turned to sniffing glue. You would see them with a paper bag scrunched at one end held to their faces, inhaling the fumes which would get them high and destroy their brains in a matter of a only a very few years. There was one boy who would beg near John's house—"So far, no glue sniffing, thank god!" John would remark, as he helped the boy with some change. "I'd take him in, but then everyone would think I was a pederast. Imagine! Who would want to have sex with a child?" He knew the prejudicial view many held of gay men; for John was gay—indeed, so too, he insisted, was his own father, closeted his entire life.
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The Next Whisky Bar
When my father was dying, he did a lot of traveling. There were nights in the Tyrol, Days spent by the banks of the Rhone or Rhine, and for reasons we couldn't fathom, frequent trips to Bristol. Then there was the matter of his sight, which had begun to betray him years before. We didn't know what he was seeing, so each day became a desperate act of interpretation, but sometimes the things he say, or thought he saw, made him almost happy for a time, and towards the end, he invented an underworld that took the form of a crowded bar or pub, located directly below his hospital room. It was entered by means of a long staircase, And a narrow passageway, at the end of which the doorman checked your papers carefully. Once inside, there was singing and dancing, And everyone drank "good, Irish whisky." This was puzzling: he never drank whisky, never frequented a pub. Even his phantasm of the good life was not his, and soon these inventions or borrowings failed him. He became convinced that a key was lost under his chair. Nothing more. Always the lost key. - To the City, 49. |
Sadly, I also remember friend Mel and I helping a drunk and stumbling John home after the opening of a new restaurant, situated along one of the winding streets in the meyhane district behind Istiklal where people sat out in little cordoned-off areas to drink wine or rakı and share meses, the Turkish equivalent of tapas: He is so thin, I thought, shocked, as Mel and I tried to guide him along by putting our arms around his waist.
One of the more memorable trips we took together was to Afyon, along the streets of Afyon and under the overhanging verandas that traditionally allowed women to look out on the street, to get some air I supposed, while being confined to the house. From there we traveled to visit the Phrygian tombs dedicated to an ancient Mother Goddess, and then on to Lake Eğirdir and out onto a narrow spit of land to the breakwater island, Yeşilada. "Well," John announced after a busy day of sightseeing and after we had booked our respective rooms in a hotel on the island, "I'm going to go down an have a nice, refreshing glass of rakı—join me?" I remember thinking—A nice glass? I knew it would be many nice glasses.
"Thanks, I'll have glass of wine and then I want to go back to my room and do some writing."
"Of course."
And I did.
The next day we spent much time questioning folks thither and you about Prostanna, a city of "wild Pisidians," as John later put it in "Looking for Prostanna," a poem about our search which, till I saw it in print in his collection, In the Wake of the Day, I did not know had been dedicated to me. The afternoon in question we had rented a cab and went chasing up the side of a dauntingly precipitous mountain looking for the ruins. Alas, my old fear of heights thrust itself in my face:
One of the more memorable trips we took together was to Afyon, along the streets of Afyon and under the overhanging verandas that traditionally allowed women to look out on the street, to get some air I supposed, while being confined to the house. From there we traveled to visit the Phrygian tombs dedicated to an ancient Mother Goddess, and then on to Lake Eğirdir and out onto a narrow spit of land to the breakwater island, Yeşilada. "Well," John announced after a busy day of sightseeing and after we had booked our respective rooms in a hotel on the island, "I'm going to go down an have a nice, refreshing glass of rakı—join me?" I remember thinking—A nice glass? I knew it would be many nice glasses.
"Thanks, I'll have glass of wine and then I want to go back to my room and do some writing."
"Of course."
And I did.
The next day we spent much time questioning folks thither and you about Prostanna, a city of "wild Pisidians," as John later put it in "Looking for Prostanna," a poem about our search which, till I saw it in print in his collection, In the Wake of the Day, I did not know had been dedicated to me. The afternoon in question we had rented a cab and went chasing up the side of a dauntingly precipitous mountain looking for the ruins. Alas, my old fear of heights thrust itself in my face:
|
Bronwyn winced, and moaned in the back seat,
Head down, and I said, perhaps a little callousely: Well, dear, you wanted to see the Taurus Mountains... |
Despite finally arriving at a sign, "Prostanna" (presumably the ruins mentioned in classical Greek writing as early as in 113 B.C.) we arrived at the end of the road, and did not find anything:
|
We turned back, conscious of an exceptional failure.
The city was too far. We had been misled. But I Did not excuse myself. Prostanna remained an idea, Something like a thornbush or a cloud, blocking us. |
We had a lulu of a fight when I announced that I was leaving Istanbul. For the life of me, I don't remember what was said, but a day later I told him, "you picked a fight with me because you don't want me to leave."
And he agreed.
A year or so later, John and I semi-fell out over the last trip we had planned when I mentioned that an Israeli friend had invited me to visit him in Israel, and that I would arrive in Istanbul just after that sortie. John defined himself as "Labour, Labour, Labour" and was, like many, in sympathy with the Palestinians. (In fact so was my friend as was I; but I did not get a chance to tell him that.) After I had left Istanbul, sans the trip with John, I heard that his family had taken him back from Turkey, quite ill. "Alcoholic dementia" was one term that kept coming up...
On one of my last visits to England, a mutual friend there asked if I was going to see John. "I would, though I'm not sure he would remember me." I replied. Or welcome my presence, I thought.
On December 3rd, 2019, John died. When one loses a peer, a friend like that, we selfishly feel it as a loss of a whole chunk of our own life. True; subsequent events had separated us, but I still felt his absence— "Something like a thornbush or a cloud..."
Note Bene: sections of this article appeared in Witty Partition, and are included here with full permission, as well as permission from Carcanet for material by the poet, quoted herein.
And he agreed.
A year or so later, John and I semi-fell out over the last trip we had planned when I mentioned that an Israeli friend had invited me to visit him in Israel, and that I would arrive in Istanbul just after that sortie. John defined himself as "Labour, Labour, Labour" and was, like many, in sympathy with the Palestinians. (In fact so was my friend as was I; but I did not get a chance to tell him that.) After I had left Istanbul, sans the trip with John, I heard that his family had taken him back from Turkey, quite ill. "Alcoholic dementia" was one term that kept coming up...
On one of my last visits to England, a mutual friend there asked if I was going to see John. "I would, though I'm not sure he would remember me." I replied. Or welcome my presence, I thought.
On December 3rd, 2019, John died. When one loses a peer, a friend like that, we selfishly feel it as a loss of a whole chunk of our own life. True; subsequent events had separated us, but I still felt his absence— "Something like a thornbush or a cloud..."
Note Bene: sections of this article appeared in Witty Partition, and are included here with full permission, as well as permission from Carcanet for material by the poet, quoted herein.