by the way

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Astute sensibility may be largely inaccessible to others’ reputed “good sense.” So, Jane Austin’s distinction can lead into profound intuitions, thanks to conceptual resourcefulness beyond her own era’s options.

But this long posting isn’t about Ms. Austin’s novel. Generally speaking, though, I love to explore differences between transpersonal Sensibility and normative sense applied to literary thinking—and that difference is integral to Literature:
[S] authentic being of oneself (and being appreciated as oneSelf) irt [s] what one is “supposed” to be or do.

After all—and very obviously—exploring gender and class is integral to
the evolution of Literature!—to say the least.

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life is strange, then you die.

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John Ashbery, 1927—2017

I was 26 when I read just-published Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.
He was in his mid-40s. In my mid-40s, I was writing a long philosophically “poetic” discourse—and happened to read Flow Chart in “one” sitting
(over several days). I may in fact have every one of his collections.
I certainly give Notes From The Air pride of place in my primary library
(a hundred-or-so books I keep nearby, among thousands stored).

London Review of Books honors him today, including links to many poems
he published via LRB.

More to say later—including employment of some Ashbery poems from LRB, now [?] available only to subscribers, to which I’m a longstanding one).