As I was doing some background research about John
Ashbery I read in several articles that
one of his aims when writing poetry was to write poems that not even critics
could talk about. I think that is a very powerful statement and says a lot
about how he has chosen to express his poems. I think Ashbery utilizes nuances
of the English language such as punctuation and capitalization—nuamces that are
meant to make reading more clear—to write these convoluted sentences that could
either mean a million different things or they could mean nothing at all.
Ashbery also heavily relies on word placement and font so that he can pick and
choose where he wants his reader’s attention to be as they are reading his work.
For example in his poem the White Paper he
has 48 words arranged in 11 lines centered on the page and it is literally
surrounded by white paper the poem reads:
A
WHITE PAPER
And
if he thought that
All
was foreign—
As,
gas and petrol, en-
gine
full of seeds, barking to hear the night
The
political contaminations
Of
what he spoke
Spotted
azaleas brought to meet
him
Sitting next day
The
judge, emotions,
The
crushed paper heaps.
In this poem I feel like the poet is trying to get his
readers to pay attention to the white paper that the poem is written on instead
of the actual poem. When I read this poem the first time I could not figure out
any type of meaning. It made me think that the formatting Ashbery used has to
do more with the meaning then the words. By surrounding the words with a ton of
White Space the text forces you to pay very close attention to what it says
just because words seem “scarce” on the page and the brain wants to try and
make sense of words it reads. On the other hand it can also be that Ashbery is
trying to make a point that in life we are surrounded by white space and that
we have to be careful who we allow ourselves to meet with because one wrong
person could “crush the paper [of life] heaps”
Ashbery reminds me strongly of
Mallarme’s writing in how they both heavily rely on form to convey their message
of the actual words. In his poem Rain Ashbury
has his words formatted on the page so that the poem looks like falling rain
scattered across the page or reminds you of a bad storm that left everything
scattered and out of order. He really
makes it hard for someone to try and find meaning in his work because a lot of
his poems read like sentences where someone came in and rearranged the
words so that the sentence looses all
meaning. I do believe that critics would have a hard time talking about the
actual content of Ashbery’s poems .
I found your comments very interesting, especially when you commented on Ashbery’s wanting to create poetry that not even critics can understand. Putting that idea in line with the idea of possible continuity and connections between the poems, I found it very interesting if that is, in fact, his goal. Your comments make it seem as though Ashbery is using punctuation and other means to give the poem more meaning by giving it less meaning. It’s as if he is trying so hard not to make sense and to confuse the reader that what he writes makes sense because of it, especially if the reader is looking for meaning.
ReplyDeleteThe points that you made regarding “White Paper” really stuck out to me as well. I liked that you touched on the spacing and the layout of the poem. It’s interesting that though it can be seen as part of the structure, it is not even necessarily the structure of the poem but the pure lack of words and therefore lack of structure, being that there are no words to structure. The point, I think, is to focus on the contrast between the words and the blank paper, though most people ignore the latter completely as just a means to get to the words. Similarly, in that regard, Ashbery seems to want to have the reader broaden his understanding of the meaning past what the words might typically mean, the way that the reader must also broaden his understanding of what is usually the important part of a poem or any form of writing.
Similarly, I found your understanding about what this poem means very interesting. I liked that you had different ideas and possible understandings to take from it, even though it is a short poem. The way I understand it, this is the point of Ashbery’s writing. He works so hard to allow for no meaning and yet too much meaning. When I first read this poem and most of the other ones, I had no idea what to take away from them because they are so different than any other writing I have read before. Ashbery seems to want to give the reader the reigns in regards to what he is trying to portray. While one reader might focus on one idea, another reader might take something totally different out of it.
What I find so interesting is how, in some ways, the actual words used are unimportant in these poems. In many ways, it is more about the spacing the contrast between the words and the blank page. For example, with this poem, what I took away from it is the fact that there is a judge sitting somewhere and has heaps of paper next to him. In reality, I’m not sure what kind of meaning that has. However, when you focus on what the heaps of paper might mean or simply the way the words are on the page, there is meaning brought to the poem. Essentially, by focusing on the use of words and attempting to figure out their meaning brings meaning to the poem.
Sometimes I wonder if finding meaning in Ashbery’s poems makes sense. In more typical poems and literature, one does not have to search to the same extent for meaning. In some ways, I feel as though the searching itself is what Ashbery wants the reader to take away from the poem, rather than any actual meaning, regardless of whether we uncover it or it is inherent and easy to find.
I totally agree Sari because as I was reading the poems for the first time no matter how much I tried I could not figure out what Ashbery was trying to convey through his poems. It seemed like more I looked for meaning or purpose in his work the more convoluted everything seemed to become. So instead of trying to find meaning in his words, I chose to look elsewhere—his structure and word placement—to see if the way he laid out his words gave his poems more significance. Once I started to pay more attention to his structure instead of his actual content I found that even though his words seem like a random train of though he is purposefully using punctuation and word placement strategically to help the reader put his words in context. Then after we discussed the poems in class a little more closely I noticed how Ashbery carried through certain themes that he wanted his readers to know about by using word associations and strategic placement. This was a very difficult author to read but once you start noticing patterns, you can start enjoying the book little bit more.
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