Quite a while back, maybe two years ago, I made some negative comments about John Ashbery at the Poetry Free-For-All. I called him "a sham", regardless of what Harold Bloom might say about him to the contrary. A few months after that I wrote a sort of apologetic post about Ashbery, which was both quite literally an apology for those comments as well as an attempt at a literary (insert laughter here) apologetic for his work, though in no sense did I lose the strong reservations I had, and still have, in regard to his esthetic approach to the craft of poem-making. I still think Ashbery's main body of work is, in an obvious sense, to literature what water is to scotch tape. If communication is the main purpose of any type of literature, and I suppose it ought to be, then Ashbery's poems don't function well in a literary sense, and, in some cases, do not function at all.
But there is an undeniable art to his poems, which are frequently lyrical and often beautiful, at least in a concrete sense, in that the words themselves have a pleasing sound and feel to them. Without that I suppose he wouldn't have achieved much. I remember reading that Auden, who picked Ashbery's first book for a literary prize of some distinction*, later claimed to have comprehended virtually nothing in the poems. Not surprising, because at first glance, and even after a few run-throughs, the poems seem highly competent, and they certainly appear to be fine works. It's only after repeated readings that one begins to get that creeping feeling of having been suckered.
After that initial feeling, some readers either give up or keep reading him anyway, out of some sort of nagging jealousy maybe, wondering what in the hell everyone else is discovering in those ornate fakes. Why the hell is this man famous? Why the hell is this man championed by one of the most powerful critics in academia? What the fuck?
I can't speak for others, but for me there was a third phase. I had reached a point at which I was convinced that Ashbery was a sham, that his poems were nonsense served up as an elite type of modern poetry, not blatant nonsense, like some of the work of a fellow "New York School" poet Kenneth Koch, but a tricky and deceptive nonsense. I believed that he represented everything that was rotten esthetically (and more broadly philosophically) in modern art and literature. He was the enemy of Reason. He was the Great Satan, the Naked Emperor who purposefully destroyed lines of communication, purposefully frustrated the passing down of ideas and ideals, and who was wrongly glorified because of it. He was the Laureate of Doubt and Uncertainty. The perfect and fitting literary icon for a thoroughly fucked-up age.
Then I made some public comments about Ashbery (though this was that very minor-leaguey, arm-chair-quarterbacky, back-seat-drivery, Internety public we're talking about. Yes, this one here.)
After that I went back to Ashbery's poems to make sure I couldn't get anything out of them, at which time, of course, I began to get something out of them. You see, that's the trick with Ashbery. You have to go into his poems with both barrells, ready to shoot them down for their incomprehensibility. It's exactly through a kind of "negative capability" that the poems begin to reveal themselves, and you have to realize that two years ago I would have shot myself for typing the first part of this sentence. I won't claim, though, that the poems necessarily succeed, at least not in the way that a Frost poem, or a Tennyson poem, succeeds, though a handful do come close; rather, they work, they have a kind of utility to them, in at least two ways: first, they force the reader to pay attention, and they are on extremely intimate terms with that reader, each and every one of them, in a way that not even Billy Collins can manage; and they also create images, sometimes in a vivid and traditional sense, but more often in a kind of surrealistic, psychadelic sense, in that they cause a definite mental disintegration which is on one hand extremely frustrating and on the other hand a valid and powerful imitation of certain actual day-to-day conscious states and dream-states.
One Ashbery line leads inexorably into the next, and he often uses enjambment, not to create an enlightening or informative surprise, but to cause still more bewilderment. It's almost as if he allows the poem to veer out of control, or into a variety of tangents, in the very same way our thoughts sometimes seem to run. Not that this is a desireable thing, mind you. I am sure that certain highly intelligent and disciplined minds experience this kind of thing only very rarely, or not at all; but in my case, I go through it all too often. Sometimes, five minutes in the life of my poor little brain is probably very similar to an Ashbery poem.
Nonetheless, I do believe that the highest function of art should be to portray things as they can be, or ought to be, and not necessarily what they are. The latter's just journalism, really, though certainly there's a place for graphic realism in art, as well as for Romanticism. I am also sure that quite often the two things mix well together. In that respect, where does Ashbery stand? As a poetic voice for various and sundry, conscious and unconscious, mental states, he's second to none; but what else can we get out of him? He seems to have virtually no political ideas to convey, and if he has, they have thus far sailed right on over this reader's melon. Philosophy in general? I wonder if Ashbery might be some type of Idealist, since his descriptions of the external world and physical objects are often ostensibly unconnected with one another, or with anything in particular; but I have no right to an opinion in that matter, really. It's just an observation, probably worth nothing.
I don't know. What does he represent? Who does he represent? Maybe everyone, maybe no one. He's not a downer, like so many modern poets. He doesn't whine, complain, campaign, or pontificate; he isn't a mouthpiece for anyone, he's never corny or angry or defiant or sentimental, he's famous, but he's never vain. What the fuck?
I might come back to this at a later date. Or, at a different time when dreams come after, in which case, for the time being at least held or disembodied, all is manipulated and remembered, although inclined, as in the cranial beam of deadlights, to a place which is where we travel and where we are.
*too lazy to look it up
But there is an undeniable art to his poems, which are frequently lyrical and often beautiful, at least in a concrete sense, in that the words themselves have a pleasing sound and feel to them. Without that I suppose he wouldn't have achieved much. I remember reading that Auden, who picked Ashbery's first book for a literary prize of some distinction*, later claimed to have comprehended virtually nothing in the poems. Not surprising, because at first glance, and even after a few run-throughs, the poems seem highly competent, and they certainly appear to be fine works. It's only after repeated readings that one begins to get that creeping feeling of having been suckered.
After that initial feeling, some readers either give up or keep reading him anyway, out of some sort of nagging jealousy maybe, wondering what in the hell everyone else is discovering in those ornate fakes. Why the hell is this man famous? Why the hell is this man championed by one of the most powerful critics in academia? What the fuck?
I can't speak for others, but for me there was a third phase. I had reached a point at which I was convinced that Ashbery was a sham, that his poems were nonsense served up as an elite type of modern poetry, not blatant nonsense, like some of the work of a fellow "New York School" poet Kenneth Koch, but a tricky and deceptive nonsense. I believed that he represented everything that was rotten esthetically (and more broadly philosophically) in modern art and literature. He was the enemy of Reason. He was the Great Satan, the Naked Emperor who purposefully destroyed lines of communication, purposefully frustrated the passing down of ideas and ideals, and who was wrongly glorified because of it. He was the Laureate of Doubt and Uncertainty. The perfect and fitting literary icon for a thoroughly fucked-up age.
Then I made some public comments about Ashbery (though this was that very minor-leaguey, arm-chair-quarterbacky, back-seat-drivery, Internety public we're talking about. Yes, this one here.)
After that I went back to Ashbery's poems to make sure I couldn't get anything out of them, at which time, of course, I began to get something out of them. You see, that's the trick with Ashbery. You have to go into his poems with both barrells, ready to shoot them down for their incomprehensibility. It's exactly through a kind of "negative capability" that the poems begin to reveal themselves, and you have to realize that two years ago I would have shot myself for typing the first part of this sentence. I won't claim, though, that the poems necessarily succeed, at least not in the way that a Frost poem, or a Tennyson poem, succeeds, though a handful do come close; rather, they work, they have a kind of utility to them, in at least two ways: first, they force the reader to pay attention, and they are on extremely intimate terms with that reader, each and every one of them, in a way that not even Billy Collins can manage; and they also create images, sometimes in a vivid and traditional sense, but more often in a kind of surrealistic, psychadelic sense, in that they cause a definite mental disintegration which is on one hand extremely frustrating and on the other hand a valid and powerful imitation of certain actual day-to-day conscious states and dream-states.
One Ashbery line leads inexorably into the next, and he often uses enjambment, not to create an enlightening or informative surprise, but to cause still more bewilderment. It's almost as if he allows the poem to veer out of control, or into a variety of tangents, in the very same way our thoughts sometimes seem to run. Not that this is a desireable thing, mind you. I am sure that certain highly intelligent and disciplined minds experience this kind of thing only very rarely, or not at all; but in my case, I go through it all too often. Sometimes, five minutes in the life of my poor little brain is probably very similar to an Ashbery poem.
Nonetheless, I do believe that the highest function of art should be to portray things as they can be, or ought to be, and not necessarily what they are. The latter's just journalism, really, though certainly there's a place for graphic realism in art, as well as for Romanticism. I am also sure that quite often the two things mix well together. In that respect, where does Ashbery stand? As a poetic voice for various and sundry, conscious and unconscious, mental states, he's second to none; but what else can we get out of him? He seems to have virtually no political ideas to convey, and if he has, they have thus far sailed right on over this reader's melon. Philosophy in general? I wonder if Ashbery might be some type of Idealist, since his descriptions of the external world and physical objects are often ostensibly unconnected with one another, or with anything in particular; but I have no right to an opinion in that matter, really. It's just an observation, probably worth nothing.
I don't know. What does he represent? Who does he represent? Maybe everyone, maybe no one. He's not a downer, like so many modern poets. He doesn't whine, complain, campaign, or pontificate; he isn't a mouthpiece for anyone, he's never corny or angry or defiant or sentimental, he's famous, but he's never vain. What the fuck?
I might come back to this at a later date. Or, at a different time when dreams come after, in which case, for the time being at least held or disembodied, all is manipulated and remembered, although inclined, as in the cranial beam of deadlights, to a place which is where we travel and where we are.
*too lazy to look it up
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