Ashbery
constructs his lines in a unique way that is unusually seen in most poetry. His
lines are not continuous line by line. Each line is mostly its own idea. There
are topical shifts between lines or between stanzas. The only rhythms present
across the lines are how the lines sound word wise. Enjambment also takes place
within all of his poems and he uses this technique to introduce new themes or
ideas within the poem. There are certain cues that give you hints into how to
read his poems. For instance the word “and” is sometimes used in the beginning
of a new line and in this instance this means that the current line and the
line before it connect. Also Ashbery
tends to capitalize the first word on a line and this means that a new idea is
beginning. When he wants us to think about something in particular he puts
ellipses after the word. This causes the reader to think about what was just
said. Ashbery uses punctuation in a weird way in his poems, for instance he
will open a quote with a quotation mark but that will be the only one used. In
the poems when a line starts with a lower case word then that hints that the
previous line connects to it. Although it makes it easier to understand the
poems if you read the lines separately because he even claimed that he wrote
his poems like life. Life is known to be unpredictable and you never know
what’s going to happen day top day. Ashbery’s lines are constructed in that
same sense where you never know what to expect each line. Surrealism structure and language of the
poetry mimics our thought process. Sometimes he places his lines sporadically
across the page which could indicate that he wants readers to read the poem in
a certain fashion. In the following passage we see an example of how Ashbery
places his lines/words in a particular way:
“The
centennial Before we can
old eat
members
with their chins
so
high up rats
relaxing the cruel discussion”
(Ashbery, 33)
As seen above, Ashbery also uses spacing to his advantage in
his poetry. I think that he does this to space out separate thoughts that he
put together. Also it could be another strategy to slow down readers and make
them think. One of the more specific things Ashbery does is he connects his separate
poems by using reoccurring words such as lilac, moss, tree, sperm, dwarf, etc.
They will show up randomly in his poems to add to an image of a specific line.
I think this helps readers to understand that there may be an underlying theme
across all of the poems and those reoccurring words build towards that.
In the paragraph selected above, it appears that Ashbury is using fragments to create new possible sentences. That is, he fragments a sentence or sentences that he draws from the original source by pulling out "The centennial" and "Before we can." Maybe these phrases came from sentences of multiple different sources. While the original sources of the found text are unknown, we can find some continuity in this passage. One method in which we can identify continuity is through the erasure that Asbury employs. The spacing suggests erasure in which sentences/phrases were deleted from the original source that the found text was pulled from. The spacing is doing something that suggests that the original text would ground it in a particular setting. However, the erasure doesn't explicitly state the setting. Even so, we are able to grasp a sense of the setting through the spacing and existing fragments in the poem conveyed. We know this because there are key words that seem to signal certain themes. For example, 'centennial' and 'old' seem to describe a long length of time, perhaps something being antiquates. "their chins" and "so high up" seem to be connected in that the latter describes the position of "chins." Because of these verbal cues from the fragmented text, we are able to get a sense of the overall tone/theme.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, while there is a grammatical incompleteness that results from the abruptly cut lines, the way that the spaces and capitalization occur suggests their roles in the original source. For example, "The centennial" appears to be the subject of its original sentence. "Before we can" implies that the subsequent words in the line would communicate some sort of suggestion or statement. The snippet, "members with their chins" appears to suggest its original placement as the middle of a sentence. In this way, spacing that indicates erasure connects the barrage of fragments. In the way that spacing and textual cues are being employed through the poem, certain themes/tones from the original source are being echoed. Because of this, we, as readers, are able to get a sense of continuity.