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Across the Millennium: The Persistence of John Ashbery
American Poetry Review, The, Mar/Apr 2004 by Moramarco, Fred
Across the Millennium: The Persistence of John Ashbery
WAKEFULNESS. John Ashbery.
New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998
GIRLS ON THE RUN, A POEM. John Ashbery.
New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999
YOUR NAME HERE: POEMS. John Ashbery.
New York: Farrar, Straus &, Giroux, 2000
OTHER TRADITIONS. John Ashbery.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000
As UMBRELLAS FOLLOW RAIN. John Ashbery.
Lenox, Mass.: Qua Books, 2001
CHINESE WHISPERS. John Ashbery.
New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002
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IT'S NOT EASY KEEPING UP WITH JOHN AsHbery's work. Chinese Whispers is his twenty-first book of poetry and throughout the nineties and the century's turn they have been coming at us at the rate of nearly one every year. Here are five in four years, plus a book of essays that deepens our understanding of the underpinnings of his work. (One other title from a smaller press that I've not yet gotten to appeared in 2001.)
For me, Ashbery has always been a poet of lines rather than of poems. Lines like
the clock ticked on and on, happy about
being apprenticed to eternity.
(Wakefulness)
and
Please don't tell me it all adds up in the end.
I'm sick ofthat one.
(Your Name Here)
and
On wings of windows, parties, songs,
Comedy and mystery, the world drenches us.
(Chinese Whispers)
and
and, entering the bizarre world of Henry Darger's illustrated novel, The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the GlandecoAngelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, in his book length poem, which has mercifully shortened Darger's title to Girls on the Run:
It's as if Darger's figures are talking directly to Ashbery, insisting that he re-transcribe their "story." But you have to use the word "story" loosely here, because in Girls on the Run, lines like these often lead us to other lines they seem totally unrelated to; pronouns shift, images undergo metamorphosis: "slush" is paired with "feathers," "graffiti" is found under "frozen mounds of yak butter," and "arroz con polio" turns into a sailing vessel; elegance exists side by side with the most impossible banalities, and we are in the self-contained world of a disturbed and disturbing mind, one that seems profoundly innocent as well as obsessively driven. As readers of Girls on the Run will learn from the dust jacket, this is the mind of Henry Darger (18921972) a reclusive "outsider" artist who spent his much life compulsively drawing figures of little girls with short skirts and penises and writing stories about them. Ashbery attempts to replicate that world-or at least create a parallel sort of a world in his book-length poem-but apart from introducing his loyal audience to the absolutely singular world of a lifelong recluse, this book exercises little hold on the reader. One page reads pretty much like the next, and there is little narrative glue to hold the poem together. On the other hand, narrative glue is never spread on very thick in Ashbery's work, and the shifting ground of GiHs on the Run is familiar territory for his fans.
Commenting on John Wheelwright's evaluation of Laura Riding's poetry in Other Traditions, Ashbery points out that poets "in writing about other poets tend to write about themselves." Then he says this about Wheelwright's own work:
Even where I cannot finally grasp his meaning, which is much of the time, I remain convinced by the extraordinary power of his language as it flashes by on its way from somewhere to somewhere. At times it seems like higher mathematics; I can sense the 'elegance' of his solutions without being able to follow the steps by which he arrives at them. In short, he is a poet from whom one takes a great deal on faith, but one does it voluntarily. His conviction is contagious.
Surely this observation describes a good many readers' response to Ashbery's work as well. It certainly describes mine. "The language flashes by on its way from somewhere to somewhere." This is quintessential Ashbery, turning language into life, which also, by the way, flashes by on its way from somewhere to somewhere. These books are filled with illuminating flashes.
"No matter how you twist it," he writes in the title poem of Wakefulness, "life stays frozen in the headlights." Another quotable and luminous line that ushers us into the world of the awakened that is assembled in this book. The word "wakefulness" : has the usually Ashbery resonance: awake, a wake, wakeful, fullness-it's a whole world full of wakes. Dreams and sleeplessness are evoked throughout as are various other transformative states. One thing always leads to another, and becomes another. Change, of course, is life's only constant, though we nearly always resist it. Ashbery has some fun with his own resistance, wanting to pummel it altogether: "Take this, metamorphosis. And this. And this. And this." ("Baltimore"). Words them- ' selves seem to change into things, but of course those things are merely other words: "We thought we had seen a few new / adjectives, but nobody was too sure. They might have been gerunds, or bunches of breakfast..." ("Last Night I Dreamed I was in Bucharest"). Change accelerates, permeates everything: "We, meanwhile, have witnessed changes, and now change / floods in from every angle." But Ashbery goes on to make it clear that he is a jester of change: "Stop me if you've heard this one, but if you haven't, just go about your business." ("Added Poignancy"). The cliches that resonate through his poetry in the hands of virtually any other poet would bring the work down, but his purposeful use of them calls our attention to their literalness, and the way, in some senses, they help us to resist change by freezing our repetitive gestures in language. In Wakefulness you will find a "pack of liars," "no release in sight" (a shrewd transformation of "no relief in sight") "for what seemed an eternity," "There are no two ways about it," "I put two and two together," "I'm within my rights," "Anyway, what can I tell you?" "if it's the last thing we do," "The rest, as they say, as they say, is history" (the repeated "as they say" makes this a kind of meta-cliche), "it was one for the books," "burns the midnight oil," "all is shot to hell," "it gives me goose bumps," "there is something to be said for everything," and "It is definitely time to move on" (many politicians' favorite).
