John Ashbery's eyes

.... are indeed blue, but a greyish type of blue.

Lee Harwood's "As Your Eyes Are Blue. . ." and  "For John in the Mountains" are closely related poems, both recalling the same flowery and meadowy trip to the mountains. (I would assume, in France or Switzerland.)

In the latter poem, he writes:

                        a dark snow
darker than your eyes'
dark snow

Ashbery's eye-colour compared to the blueish-grey colour of snow in shadow. To spell it out.

John Ashbery and Lee Harwood, Paris 1965 (Photo by Pierre Martory)

[Image source: http://jacketmagazine.com/16/ah-harw.html, where it was reproduced courtesy of Lee Harwood (I've blown up the small JPG, which is why it looks blurred)]


*

Kenneth Koch's much-quoted 1965 conversation with John Ashbery.
http://thisrecording.com/today/2011/1/20/in-which-john-ashbery-and-kenneth-koch-start-making-sense.html


Essay by Andrew Field about the early Ashbery and pragmatism:
https://andrewfield81.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/the-imminence-of-a-revelation-not-yet-produced-ashbery-and-the-pragmatist-sublime/   (with particular reference to the opening line of Some Trees, "We see us as we truly behave:")


Essay by Bob Archambeau about Ashbery's art world at the end of 1940s:
http://samizdatblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/john-ashbery-and-poetics-of-art-world.html