"The Red Easel," John Ashbery

Say doc, those swags are of the wrong period
though in harmony with the whole. You shouldn't take it too hard.
Everybody likes it when the casual drift
becomes more insistent, setting in order the house
while writing finis to its three-decker novel. Only when the plaint
of hens pierces dusk like a screen door
does the omnipresent turn top-heavy. Oh, really?
I thought they had names for guys like you
and places to take them to. That's true, but
let's not be hasty, shall we, and pronounce your example
a fraud before all the returns are in? These are,
it turns out, passionate and involving, as well as here to stay.

From Where Shall I Wander.

I hope it's not as if I need to tell you about John Ashbery, right? And Where Shall I Wander has actually drawn several appreciative reviews already, from Meghan O'Rourke in Slate to Charles McGrath on the cover of the NYTNR. Ashbery also talked about the book with Scott Simon on NPR's Weekend Edition.

Because sestinas are so damn cool, and you should always link to them when you find them, I offer you Ashbery's "Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape," even though some smartass adds his own dance remix to show how it can be "improved." (I wax sarcastic, but actually in principle it's not a bad idea for a poetry column. In my own misspent youth I used to go on USENET and say things like "a bad poet hurts poetry," then criticize people for enjambment. But I grew out of it.)