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John Ashbery

Ashbery, one of the most acclaimed of contemporary American poets, was born on July 28, 1927, in Rochester, New York, and graduated from Harvard in 1949. He earned a master's degree from Columbia in 1951 and then

Uptick

by John Ashbery (1927–2017)

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15

We were sitting there, and
I made a joke about how
it doesn’t dovetail: time,
one minute running out
faster than the one in front
it catches up to.
That way, I said,
there can be no waste.
Waste is virtually eliminated.

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