Post-Solstice Sortes Vergilianae
Images and ideas to sit with as the year dies and the light starts growing
Hi all, happy end-of-year. This post offers more early Ashbery, this time with a recording of the poem to approximate appropriate pacing.. I couldn’t find a file of his reading this particular poem, so took the liberty of speaking it out myself. It’s a longish poem and characteristically involved, meandering. Especially if you’re not a frequent reader of poems in the Ashberyan style, I would recommend listening and following along simultaneously.
(context courtesy Wikipedia:) “The Sortes Vergilianae (Virgilian Lots) is a form of divination by bibliomancy in which advice or predictions of the future are sought by interpreting passages from the works of the Roman poet Virgil. The use of Virgil for divination may date to as early as the second century AD, and is part of a wider tradition that associated the poet with magic.”
Happy birthday, Capricorn. Happy New Year, everybody. Then the sky opened up, revealing much more than any of you were intended to know. Largescale hyperspeed accumulation (and degeneration) must be managed on the individual spiritual level—can be, with an armory and discipline of contemplative practices. Tend gently to yourselves between now and the spring equinox, and prioritize your little rituals of calm and of pleasure. Forgive, for now, any tendencies—yours or others’, acute or ambient—to rush or pressure situations: i.e., don’t bother trying to trick the thing into happening. Trust that the greater curve of the elaboration will shake out soon enough, lit from within and without. . .
xxKK