John Ashbery

Alms for the Beekeeper

free verse austere

Alms for the Beekeeper - meaning Summary

Everyday Missteps and Maneuvers

A loose, fragmentary snapshot of domestic and professional life, the poem traces small mistakes, casual conversation, and quiet schemes. Scenes shift between breakfast talk and legal or corporate posturing, suggesting social maneuvering and tentative authority. Repeated actions and abrupt temporal markers—the night entry into a firm and the calendar note that the 26th is a Monday—create a sense of cyclical uncertainty and understated consequences from ordinary choices.

Read Complete Analyses

He makes better errors that way. Pass it around at breakfast: the family and all, down there with a proximate sense of power, lawyering up. Less log-heavy, your text-strategy beat out other options, is languid. Duets in the dust start up, begin. Again. He entered the firm at night. The 26th is a Monday.

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