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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, March 13, 2007</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:black'><img height="360" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/DcunDcacy-Cv2lIhuWyqFs344Y43xh5xx-rwLyS1sobH05DMqoaO9Zm5wFEmBcEkDHu4NSbWg9LUkfsGokXoNAisfpsrWLanlcmcMLts36r73Ko14GYtPV6mjuo%3Ds0-d" width="243"><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>It&#8217;s worth noting that the continual appearance of new books of <a href="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/ashbery/"><span style='color:black'>John</span></a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ashbery"><span  style='color:black'>Ashbery&#8217;s</span></a> short poems has not resulted in the same complaints that &#8220;he&#8217;s not doing anything new&#8221; or &#8220;he&#8217;s simply repeating past triumphs in comfortable forms&#8221; that used to greet the somewhat similar short books published by Robert Creeley toward the end of his life. My counter-argument here has been that it makes no sense to complain that somebody who has changed the world of poetry forever &#8211; something I believe both Ashbery &amp; Creeley have done &#8211; doesn&#8217;t continue to forge such changes ad infinitum. Each wrote the poems he personally needed to have written &amp; when the world of verse shifted to accommodate this new thing, each kept on writing the poems he personally needed. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>One reason for the variance between the reception Creeley&#8217;s books got and the one that Ashbery is continuing to receive today, however, has little to do with either author directly, but rather is a register of their somewhat different audiences. Although <a href="http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/ashbery/ashbery.htm"><span style='color:black'>John</span></a> <a href="http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/238"><span style='color:black'>Ashbery</span></a> has been a relentlessly innovative author, he has also long been a favorite of Quietist critics (and to some degree of Quietist poets), especially championed by Harold Bloom, the great white whale of the academy. These more conservative readers value Ashbery, but they don&#8217;t especially value the new. In this way, they actually avoid the little trap that post-avants sometimes fell into with regards to Creeley, but their own position is as contradictory as any, a problematic that was crowned when Ashbery was given all the Official Verse Culture awards in 1975 for <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, </i>a work that can only be described as a vicious satire of the very people who celebrated it. So the question remains: what is it you value in reading John Ashbery, if in fact you don&#8217;t value the new?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>That&#8217;s a thought that has been haunting my reading of Ashbery&#8217;s latest book, the beautiful but slender <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061173837/A_Worldly_Country/index.aspx"><span style='color:black'>A Worldly Country</span></a>, </i>just out from Ecco, reduced these days into being an imprint of HarperCollins. Just 76 pages of poetry with a detail from a Jane Freilicher painting for its cover, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>A Worldly Country </i>could hardly be more beautiful, nor the poetry it contains more accomplished. John Ashbery may turn 80 this year, but there is no sign that he&#8217;s lost any of his inventiveness or wit, or that the ear has gone flat or any of the other possible maladies that can &#8211; and too often do &#8211; beset older poets. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>One possible suggestion towards an answer <span class=GramE>comes,</span> it would seem, from Ashbery himself, in a poem that occurs late in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>A Worldly Country, </i>entitled &#8220;So Long, Santa&#8221;:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>You were good to us<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
but we&#8217;ve got to think these things<br>
out for ourselves, check in with you<br>
later &#8211; why did I say that?<br>
Not everything has to be<br>
as big and full as earth.<br>
<br>
After he found a million dollars in a slot<br>
the boy persisted, dying without uncovering a lot.<br>
It&#8217;s good to be painful<br>
because it will come round again<br>
and we won&#8217;t be ready<span class=GramE>:</span><br>
Barbara Allen&#8217;s cruelty, the night wind<br>
biting at scarves, pedestrians hurrying along.<br>
<br>
And if I so longed for you as<br>
to make the original millennial blush go away,<br>
us back to our pets, things we had<br>
to learn at school,<br>
I&#8217;d be ashamed of my distance<br>
from you, for being indispensable <br>
at times and cures &#8211;<br>
just getting the right thing right, for once.<br>
<br>
After finishing everything up<br>
I pay a formal call to the broker.<br>
Sherry is drunk<br>
and it will soon be time to think of the next set of circumstances.<br>
Oh hell everything is that way<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
this way, that way, twisted in the sun<br>
of endurance &#8211;<br>
the back way in then,<br>
the assertion of formality without<br>
a celebration next time.<br>
That&#8217;s all any of us gets<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
why I am happy with you, alone, just us.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Even here, there&#8217;s not a lot of form to this &#8220;assertion of formality,&#8221; the mere echo of a failed rhyme from <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>circumstances </i>to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>endurance </i>(and before either, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>distance</i>), the deliberate clumsiness of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>slot </i>and <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>lot. It&#8217;s good to be painful / because it will come around again / and we won&#8217;t be ready </i>may be as good a rationale as any for the reiteration at the heart of structure, but it is worth noting what is being characterized here as formal: a <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>call to the broker. </i>The &#8220;real&#8221; world, it would seem, is just the opposite: <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>everything is that way, / this way, that way, twisted in the sun / of endurance. </i><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Contrast this with the book&#8217;s one moment of high form, the title poem literally on page 1:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>Not the smoothness, not the insane clocks on the square<span class=GramE>,</span><br> 
the scent of manure in the municipal parterre,<br>
not the fabrics, the sullen mockery of <span class=SpellE>Tweety</span> Bird,<br>
not the fresh troops that needed freshening up. If it occurred<br>
in real time, it was OK, and if it was time in a novel<br>
that was OK too. From palace and hovel<br>
the great parade flooded avenue and byway<br>
and turnip fields became just another highway.<br>
Leftover bonbons were thrown to the chickens<br>
and geese, who squawked like the very dickens.<br>
There was no peace in the bathroom, none in the china closet<br>
or the banks, where no one came to make a deposit.<br>
In short all hell broke loose that wide afternoon.<br>
By evening all was calm again. A crescent moon<br>
hung in the sky like a parrot on its perch.<br>
Departing guests smiled and called, &quot;See you in church!&quot;<br>
For night, as usual, knew what it was doing<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
providing sleep to offset the great ungluing<br>
that tomorrow again would surely bring.<br>
As I gazed at the quiet rubble, one thing<br>
puzzled me: What had happened, and why?<br>
One minute we were up to our necks in rebelliousness<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
and the next, peace had subdued the ranks of hellishness. <br>
<br>
So often it happens that the time we turn around in<br>
soon becomes the shoal our pathetic skiff will run aground in.<br>
And just as waves are anchored to the bottom of the sea<br>
we must reach the shallows before God cuts us free. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>On the one hand, that of &#8220;So Long, Santa,&#8221; we see the formalism of the Quiet world proposed as a mode of solace, an ointment against pain. But in the title poem, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>the sullen mockery of <span class=SpellE>Tweety</span> Bird </i>shows up right before a reference to U.S. troops, an almost sadistic view of the human slaughter our president thinks of as &#8220;spreading democracy&#8221; &#8211; the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>scent of manure </i>indeed! <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The cyclical imbalance between the forces posed in the book&#8217;s title poem is on target: Ashbery has benefited from keeping readers off balance &amp; on guard in this manner for half a century. It&#8217;s the bad cop (here in the form of <span class=SpellE>Tweety</span> Bird) that makes his good cop seem so very sweet, yet without this malevolent twin, it might all be enough to cause some sort of insulin shock, or at least the nausea a child could get from licking all the frosting from a cake. The little parody of the departure scene at the end of &#8220;The Game of Chess&#8221; in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Waste Land </i>is hardly accidental. And here also we see the cyclical (<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>night, as usual</i>) proposed as a balm to soothe the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>great ungluing </i>of day. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The final four lines here are worth noting, first for the way the calculatedly bad grammar of the first couplet reinforces just how pathetic our skiff really is. Secondly for the dire pessimism that it all must all end in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>the shallows. </i><o:p></o:p></span></p> 

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>I&#8217;ll leave it to the more clinically minded as to whether or not Ashbery is intentional in his associations of form itself with depression, at least in its reiterative Quietest conception, tho that certainly is one possible reading. My own interest is in how well &#8211; and for how many decades now &#8211; John Ashbery has been able to manage this balancing act between two universes of readers who come to him with very different interests and needs. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, December 12, 2006</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><img height="180" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/quuVvlWlu9A8xhyzfMVfCuXWkvM8hk1OBdaCMjfl25kyGY8xJZaal9OxFpUn4bXwhc-DVDF8KKEK6i3jNcBp1j8aFdl6B9BciEU%3Ds0-d" width="150"><br>
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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>It strikes me as bizarre that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ashbery"><span style='color:windowtext'>John</span></a> <a href="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/ashbery/"><span style='color:windowtext'>Ashbery</span></a>, of all people, never has received a <a href="http://www.arts.gov/honors/Medals/"><span style='color:windowtext'>National Medal for the Arts</span></a>. The medal has been given out now for 21 years to </span><st1:time Minute="52" Hour="9"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>8 to 10</span></st1:time><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> recipients per year, including both individuals and organizations. Of the more than 200 medal recipients, the entire list of poets ever to have received this honor is:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Anthony Hecht, 2004<br>
Maya Angelou, 2000<br>
Gwendolyn Brooks, 1995<br>
Richard Wilbur, 1994<br>
</span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Stanley</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> Kunitz, 1993<br>
Robert Penn </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Warren</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>, 1987<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Need I say just how pathetic that list is?<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span>Gwendolyn Brooks and the Five Dwarves <span class=GramE>represents</span> the whole of poetry over, say, the last half century? It&#8217;s high time we rectify this nonsense. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The National Medal doesn&#8217;t need only to go to graybeards &#8211; Robert Duvall, Dolly <span class=SpellE>Parton</span>, Twyla Tharp, Ron (<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Andy Griffith Show, Happy Days, The <span class=SpellE>Da</span> Vinci Code</i>) Howard &amp; Yo-Yo Ma have all received this acknowledgment of their lifetime achievement in recent years. Nor does it have to be only the most sclerotic practitioners &#8211; <span class=SpellE>Wynton</span> Marsalis <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>has</i> received one, tho Miles Davis never did. Nor did Anthony Braxton or Steve Lacy or Cecil Taylor. John Cage never received a medal, nor did Stan Brakhage, nor even Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg. Nor, to come back to poetry, did Allen Ginsberg, Jackson Mac Low, Barbara Guest, Carl Rakosi or Robert Creeley. But Austin City Limits, Ralph Stanley, Buddy Guy, Rudolfo Anaya &amp; Trisha Brown have all been named. Gregory <span class=SpellE>Rabassa</span>, the translator of Julio Cortázar, the great Oulipo fictioneer, was on the list in 2006. <span class=SpellE>Ramblin</span>&#8217; Jack Elliott received one in 1998 in what was perhaps the medal&#8217;s single most interesting year, going also to Fats Domino, Agnes Martin, Frank Gehry, Philip Roth, Gregory Peck, Gwen <span class=SpellE>Verdon</span>, Steppenwolf Theatre Company and &#8230; Sara Lee Corporation (for its role as patron). <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I believe that <a href="http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/238"><span style='color:windowtext'>Ashbery</span></a> would be among the first to acknowledge the hollowness of honors, as such, and there was a time &#8211; say, ten years ago when both Ginsberg &amp; Creeley were still alive &#8211; when one could have had a rousing argument as to whom might be the most deserving of the New Americans to be the first to receive such an award. But time has settled that argument, and the social value of having <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>any</i> member of the New Americans &#8211; the single most significant generation of poets we have had over the past half century &#8211; acknowledged should not be under-estimated. <o:p></o:p></span></p> 

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>It may be worth noting that two-thirds of the poets named to date were chosen by Bill &#8211; &#8220;I had poets at both my inaugurals&#8221; &#8211; </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Clinton</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>. Hecht&#8217;s appointment by George W. may seem pretty lame, but George H.W. managed to name exactly none. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>All of the Objectivists are gone. There are at most a dozen of the 44 poets included in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The New American Poetry </i>still alive, half of whom one could argue are at least as deserving as any of the poets who have thus far received the medal. (Personally, I would <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>love </i>to see George Bush and Amiri Baraka together, but maybe that one&#8217;s not going to happen.) Poets from the generation <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>after </i>the New Americans &#8211; Joanne Kyger, Robert Kelly, <span class=GramE>Jerry</span> Rothenberg &#8211; are now hitting their seventies. <span class=GramE>Recognition of </span></span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>America</span></span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>&#8217;s major literary tradition, the one that can trace its roots legitimately back not just to Pound but to Whitman, is overdue.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> Awarding <a href="http://www.flowchartfoundation.org/arc/"><span style='color:windowtext'>John</span></a> <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=233"><span style='color:windowtext'>Ashbery</span></a> this medal is an obvious first step. It&#8217;s long past time. Mr. Gioia, tear down this wall. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<br /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Desktop/silliman2a.jpg" / /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/moz-screenshot.png" / /><span style="color: #990000; font-weight: bold;">RON SILLIMAN</span> has written and edited 40 books, and had his poetry and criticism translated into 16 languages. Silliman was a 2012 Kelly Writers House Fellow, the 2010 recipient of the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council, and a 1998 Pew Fellow in the Arts. Silliman has a plaque in the walk dedicated to poetry in his home town of Berkeley and a sculpture in the Transit Center of Bury, Lancaster, a part of the Irwell Sculpture Trail. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />(c) 2002-2019 by Ron Silliman.
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