El Dorado
El Dorado - meaning Summary
Dreams and Quotidian Drift
John Ashbery's "El Dorado" follows a conversational, wandering speaker who mixes casual small talk, wry humor, and surreal image fragments. The poem shifts between personal address, dreamscapes, and mundane weather or domestic details, treating places like lost cities or roles as both familiar and oddly remote. Its tone alternates between affectionate irony and resigned observation, suggesting living as a series of fleeting assurances, self-contradictions, and quiet acceptance.
Read Complete AnalysesWe have a friend in common, the retired sophomore. His concern: that I shall get it like that, in the right and righter of a green bush chomping on future considerations. In the ghostly dreams of others it appears I am all right, and even going on tomorrow there is much to be said on all these matters, "issues," like "No rest for the weary." (And yet—why not?) Feeling under orders is a way of showing up, but stepping on Earth—she's not going to. Ten shades of pleasing himself brings us to tomorrow evening and will be back for more. I disagree with you completely but couldn't be prouder and fonder of you. So drink up. Feel good for two. I do it in a lot of places. Subfusc El Dorado is only one that I know something about. Others are recently lost cities where we used to live—they keep the names we knew, sometimes. I do it in a lot of places. Brash brats offer laughing advice, as though anything I cared about could be difficult or complicated now. That's the rub. Gusts of up to forty-five miles an hour will be dropping in later on tonight. No reason not to. So point at the luck we know about. Living is a meatloaf sandwich. I had a good time up there.
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