John Ashbery

Rainbow Laundry

memory free verse dreamlike

Rainbow Laundry - meaning Summary

Fragmented Domestic Surreal Moments

Rainbow Laundry offers a short, fragmentary scene in which ordinary images—a fruit, a cat, a directive about remembering a song—suddenly collide. The poem's speaker shifts from casual observation to imperatives and stray military phrasing, generating abrupt associative leaps rather than a linear narrative. Its economy and disjunction foreground language’s slip between perception and instruction, inviting readers to piece together meaning from images and tone instead of explicit explanation.

Read Complete Analyses

At Opium Bridge an apple with orange signature. No but a cat came in, rushing around as though its life depended on it and lets you deal with all of that. Just remember the Red River Valley, that’s all I ask, the color sergeant said.

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