While later poems are much more
traditional in nature,in his earlier work, The
Tennis Court Oath, John Ashbery’s writing presents a sort of nonsense that
is largely dissimilar than most of the other authors we have covered over the
course of this class. In many of his poems throughout the book, there appears
to be no connection between one line of a poem and the one that follows it,
resulting in a sort of jagged, disjointed feel to his poetry upon initial
inspection. However, if one looks more closely, there may be more subtle
threads that bind his lines together to construct a poem. In the second section
of the poem “America” on page fifteen and sixteen, Ashbery writes.
Ribbons
Over the Pacific
Sometimes we
The deep
additional
and more and more less deep
but hurting
under the fire
brilliant rain
to meet us.
While not related to one another in a sense that makes the
text easily decipherable, there does seem to be some cohesion to the passage as
a whole. In the passage, Ashbery calls upon a number of the same types of
imagery, particularly that of nature, in a sort of free association similar to
what can be seen in Breton’s Nadja.
Without the narration of these mental associations found in Breton’s novel, the
jumps between images and the cutting off of thoughts can be jarring. However,
the connections between phrases like “Over the Pacific”, “The deep”, and “brilliant
rain” is still evident. Instead of producing a coherent, poetic “narrative” as
more mainstream poets do, Ashbery’s poems work more loosely. These images work
in harmony to create an overall feeling in the reader similar to Breton’s
expressed intention at the beginning of Nadja.
Thus, the fragmented nature of many of Ashbery’s poems should not deter the
reader. Instead, one should read it as one does surrealist works, paying
special attention to the plentiful imagery in the work and the rhythm produced.
This makes perfect sense to me. I mean, he and the rest of the New York school were reading the surrealists, and I agree with your saying that the fragmentedness shouldn't deter the reader. I'd actually argue that that's part of the appeal. Similarly to America, I shared the poem Idaho (which also has prose and then brilliant schizophrenic disjointedness, and I think it's safe to conclude that both poems are rather artful in very similar ways) with a friend, and I told him that it sort of moves beyond traditional verse, and sort of makes a painting with words. Just as Tender Buttons was described as "cubist," this is almost post-post-surrealist Fallout, Ashbery, wouldn't you say? You have a poem like America, drawing on Breton, yet coming after a work like Finnegan's Wake. All of it blown up by Dada, and then it's all slowly put back together, and this is the result.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I don't claim to be right about any of this, that's just sort of what I've been tossing around in this little head of mine. What do you think, Grayson?
No, Connor (you're connor, right?), I totally see where you're coming from. Making paintings with words is a great way to describe what Ashbery is doing. Are you familiar with Kent Rogowski’s work, Love = Love? He connects puzzle pieces from completely unrelated puzzles to create a very evocative collage of incomplete images. Ashery reminds me of that. (You can find examples on Rogowski’s work here http://www.kentrogowski.com/projects/love-love/). The thing is that, no matter how complete the image, no matter how close it comes to being a complete narrative, it is still in the same category of the smaller text fragments, something you described as “brilliant schizophrenic disjointedness”. What I guess I’m saying is that, while it’d be easy to say that “Idaho” has long stretches of narrative broken up by more fragmented lines, those longer and more coherent narrative sections shouldn’t be viewed as any different than the hundreds of nonsensical fragments that can be found throughout The Tennis Court Oath. I don’t think they were added to create a story. Ashbery is simply using them to create a larger image. When talking about Rogowski’s work, you wouldn’t describe it as “some trees broken up by some random flowers”. You’d accept the piece as a whole in all of its disjointedness and all the feelings it evokes.
DeleteI’d love to see Ashbery himself talk about where he drew his influences from with The Tennis Court Oath. It’s so easy to make the connection between Ashbery and the surrealists to the point that I feel a little silly while re-reading this post. There is surely other sources that he is taking his inspiration from. Otherwise, he’d just be regurgitating Breton and the gang, and there’s something more at play here. I’d love to know other peoples’ opinions regarding his relationship with Joyce and the Dada movement as a whole. I don’t see a ton of the Dadaist influences here. Perhaps Dada served as something of a starting point, allowing enough antistructure in art for works like Ashbery’s to exist. I'm not sure though.
Thoughts, anyone?
Hi Grayson. I definitely agree with you that John Ashbery’s poems are unlike any of the nonsense poems that we have seen. Many times, we see him jumping
ReplyDeletefrom one subject to the next after every line creating dysfunction. However, this technique is reflective of surrealism. I like the passage that you have chosen here. And although initially there doesn’t seem to be a connection, there is in fact a reappearing theme of nature; I sense a certain imagery of a deep limitless ocean along with other elements of nature. Ashbery has an interesting way of expressing various themes without even explicitly saying them. I also feel that Ashbery develops a train of continuity, and this continuity is constructed by the imagery and structure of his text. The images that he presents in “America”, particularly in the section that you have selected, reminds me boundless entities; for instance, fire is an element that continuously burns and the image of an ocean is vast almost infinite body. Furthermore, I noticed that throughout his individual poems and across all the poems in The Tennis Court Oath, he tends to uses repetition of certain words and phrases. We have seen the word “dirt,” “dwarf” and “lilacs,” throughout Ashbery’s poems. In this passage, we see the reoccurrence of the word “deep.” In my opinion, these repeated words contribute to the continuous nature of the poems. There was one thing that I found really interesting about the way Ashbery structured The Tennis Court Oath. As I mentioned earlier, there is a theme of continuity across his poems but in his last poem, “Idaho”, we get a certain imagery of a train departing. He begins his poems with an arrival, has a trend of continuity throughout, and finally ends with a departure; in a way this overall development ties all the inconsistencies together.