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Silliman's Blog
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<p class='description'><span>A weblog focused on contemporary poetry and poetics.</span></p>
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Showing posts with label <b>textuality</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Sunday, January 26, 2003</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The poetry of John Ashbery
is all about surfaces: the text glides, line by line, from image to image,
subject to subject, seldom permitting readers to go deeper into any envisioned
landscape. Other poets who have written texts with a high surface textuality &#8211;
think of Coolidge&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Quartz Hearts </i>or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Maintains</i>, </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Barrett Watten</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Progress, </i>or
Peter Ganick&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Agoraphobia </i>&#8211; have
tended to focus on a high overall finish, a surface that maintains its texture,
its aesthetic consistency, regardless of what might transpire at other levels.
It&#8217;s almost the verbal equivalent of a highly polished metal. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Not so Ashbery. Reading his
poetry is like finding cotton balls, children&#8217;s toys &amp; shards of glass in
your oatmeal. One proceeds with caution, an anticipatory anxiety all the more
curious given just how affable almost everyone you&#8217;ll meet along the way will
turn out to be. A really good case in point is &#8220;</span><st1:street><st1:address><span style="font-family: Arial;">A Sweet Place</span></st1:address></st1:street><span style="font-family: Arial;">,&#8221; which might just be the finest single poem in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.holtzbrinckpublishers.com/FSG/search/SearchBookDisplay.asp?BookKey=660398">Chinese
Whispers</a>. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The poem begins with one of
the most extended schemas in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chinese
Whispers,</i> the image atop of a cocoa tin:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">How
happy are the girls on the cocoa tin,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">as</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> though there could be nothing in the world but
chocolate!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">As
though, to confirm this, a wall stood nearby,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">displaying</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> gold medals from various expositions &#8211;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Groningen</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> 1893, </span><st1:place><span class="SpellE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Anvers</span></span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> 1887 &#8211; whose judges had had
the good sense<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">to</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> reward the noble chocolatiers. All love&#8217;s
bright-bad sweetness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">gleams</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> in those glorious pastilles</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Ashbery here employs a
cinematic trope, starting with the static image, <span class="GramE">then</span>
entering into it. All is literal sweetness &amp; light, although the careful
reader will already have picked up on the set up the parallels &#8220;as though&#8230;/ As
though,&#8221; sending, as these phrases do, shivers of foreboding through the </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">tex</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;">t, reaching all the way to that curious last word, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pastilles,</i> literally flavored or
medicated tablets. Whether the reader attaches that term to the gold medals or
to the chocolates hidden within the tin itself, the word itself is far enough
askew from any possibility to torque the entire tableaux. Which I suspect is
exactly the point. The word all but rings a bell to announce the shift that
arrives in the next to sentences, accented by having the text continue to the
right of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pastilles,</i> but one line
down.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.75in; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">But the
empathy&#8217;s valve&#8217;s<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">shut</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> by someone &#8211; a fibrous mist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">invades</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> their stubborn cheeks and flaxen hair.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Time for the next audition.</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">At one level, the cinematic
trope is carried further &amp; trumped as the reader recognizes that &#8220;the girls
on the cocoa tin&#8221; are little more than models or aspiring actresses, shuttling
about from shoot to shoot. At a second level, the language in that first sentence
is positively bizarre &#8211; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">empathy</i>
itself is alienated by having it capped with the article <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the;</i> an impossible image is offered, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fibrous mist</i>, followed by a curiously awkward one, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stubborn cheeks.</i> This sentence
demonstrates exactly what I mean about Ashbery&#8217;s surfaces &#8211; if he wanted to
carry the trope through with flair, all the deliberate <span class="SpellE">awkwardnesses</span>
here, as though the writer himself has suddenly discovered English to be a
second language, work against the intention. But that in fact is this sentence&#8217;s
very purpose, sabotaging the very schema within which it finds itself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The next stanza, a mere
couplet, changes the frame, perhaps:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Who to watch? What new celeb&#8217;s <span class="GramE">dithering</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">is</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> this,
commemorated in blazing script?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Does Ashbery intend for us
to continue the cinematic trope beyond the stanza break, to see the portrait on
the chocolate box as a mere incident in a celebrity bio, the latest <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">E! <span class="GramE">True </span></i></span><st1:city><st1:place><span class="GramE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Hollywood</span></i></span></st1:place></st1:city><span class="GramE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> Story</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;">?</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> Or
does he intend us to hear that level merely as an echo, distanced precisely by
the cocoa tin&#8217;s retro nature contrasted against the abbreviated <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">celeb&#8217;s</i> ultra-courant </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">fla</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;">ir? My own interpretation is the latter, although I
suspect a frenzied grad student, desperate for coherence, might prefer an
alternate verdict. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">If this couplet has been the
shard of glass in the oatmeal, the next stanza offers the whole toy store.
Notice how, in these opening lines, Ashbery offers the reader possible
connectors to the rapidly receding schemas that have come before.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The
torches are extinguished in marl.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Were there torches in that
initial cocoa tin image? Not impossible, but . . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I live
in a house in the middle of the road,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">it</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> says here. No shit!<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">It says here</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;">
could in fact take us back to the celeb&#8217;s dithering in blazing script. But it&#8217;s
a link that goes nowhere, precisely as intended. With the expletive, the focus
now shifts onto the speaker, where it continues.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">What
did I do to deserve this? Who controls<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">this</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> anger management seminar? They&#8217;ve had their way
with me;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I am as
I was before. Thank heaven! If I could but remember<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">how</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> that was.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">This is classic <span class="SpellE">Ashberyan</span> technique: sentence after sentence undercuts what
has just gone before. All that coheres is the presence of a <span class="GramE">speaker,</span>
however comically crazed he might appear.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">This passage is followed
immediately by a long sentence in italics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Always, it&#8217;s nightfall<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">in</span></i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> a wood, some paths are descended,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">and</span></i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> looking out over the ropy landscape, one
sees<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">a</span></i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> necessity that was at the beginning.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">This sentence also has an
antecedent, although only rhetorically. It&#8217;s the passage about the empathy&#8217;s
valve toward the end of the first stanza. As before, awkwardness is its own
virtue, the use of commas where others might have employed periods, the &#8220;ropy
landscape,&#8221; the vast generalization of the last line. All of it in an
italicization that will depart as abruptly as it arrived.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">When the stanza continues,
reverting to roman &#8211;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Further up there is fog</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">&#8211; <span class="GramE">we</span>
have no means of locating this positional statement. Are we figuratively in the
wood, in the middle of the road, back on the cocoa tin? There is no way to
tell. We have arrived, as we almost invariably do in Ashbery&#8217;s poems, in a
landscape that is filled with character, yet indescribably abstract.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Ashbery now <span class="SpellE">reinvokes</span>
the presence of a speaker, acknowledging the listener for the first time:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">But it&#8217;s nice being standing:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">We
should be home soon,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">dearest</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">, a dry heath awaits us, and the indulgence of
sleep. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">What if
I really was a <span class="GramE">drifter,</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">would</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> you still like me? Would you <span class="GramE">vote</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">for</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> me in the straw polls of November, wait for me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">in</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> the anteroom of December, embrace the turbulent,
glittering skies<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">the</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> New Year brings? Lie down with me once and for
all?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">As with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pastilles</i> above, the instant at which Ashbery starts to undermine
the intimacy of this discourse is marked as sharply as if a bell were being
rung, in this instance with the terminal word of the fifth line, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vote. </i>The rhetorical questions continue,
only blown up to comic proportions. Even before <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vote,</i> the use of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dearest</i>
suggests a degree of privacy in this communication that Ashbery has already
long given away. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">We pass now over the gulf of
the book&#8217;s binding to the next page, to what may in fact be a new stanza (both
tone &amp; shorter line lengths suggest as much):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The
radio is silent, fretful; it bides its time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">and</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> the world forgets to consider. There is room to
tabulate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">the</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> wonders of its sesquicentennials,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">but</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> the aftermath&#8217;s unremarkable, picked<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">clean</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> by a snarky wind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Again, this passage is
entirely about surface tone &#8211; the poem is coming to its conclusion, even as it
has become impossible to discern what that conclusion might be. Instead of
action, we get aftermath, forgetfulness, silence. Everything but that irritable
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">snarky</i> suggests closure &#8211; and it is <span class="SpellE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">snarky&#8217;s</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>task precisely to undercut the gesture.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">But the poem isn&#8217;t over yet.
It has one more one-line stanza, all in italics:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Then I
became as one who followed.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Because we have had the
figured speaker before, the return of &#8220;I&#8221; is plausible. The line itself
suggests an event that has thus prefigured a change, but events are precisely
what we have not found in this poem, only tone &amp; attitude. The most
important word in this last line turns out to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as</i>, which both qualifies the assertion &#8211; he&#8217;s not saying that he&#8217;s
one who follows, only &#8220;as one&#8221; &#8211; and harks back for the first time since the
opening stanza to the parallel uses of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as</i>
in its second and third lines. <span class="GramE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">As</i> turns out to be what finally &#8220;holds the poem together,&#8221; to the
degree that anything here might.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Ashbery&#8217;s poem is thus
significant moment to moment &amp; formally very cagey, yet overall it&#8217;s a
self-canceling (not to say self-devouring) artifact, all superstructure &amp;
no base as old retro Stalinoids might put it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It&#8217;s intriguing, perhaps
even shocking, that Ashbery should turn out to be the great cross-over hit of </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">U.S.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Arial;"> poetry, the one New American beloved by the schools
of quietude. His work consistently parodies such modes, sometimes (as in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Self-Portrait in a Convex </i>Mirror) with a
viciousness that makes you question just why Ashbery puts so much energy into
mocking a poetics he so evidently despises, as if somehow he believes (fears)
that the realm of the <span class="SpellE">Howards</span> &amp; Hollanders, of
the Blooms &amp; <span class="SpellE">Vendlers</span>, were all that was the
case. It&#8217;s the ultimate Ashberyesque nightmare: doomed forever to entertain
monsters, he&#8217;s chosen to serve them this tray of perfect vomit-filled crepes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<li><a href='http://www.spdbooks.org/Search/Default.aspx?AuthorName=Ron+Silliman'>Small Press Distribution</a></li>
<li><a href='http://eclipsearchive.org/projects/TOTTELS/'>Tottel's</a></li>
<li><a href='http://twitter.com/ronsilliman'>Twitter</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.ubu.com/contemp/silliman/index.html'>Ubuweb</a></li>
<li><a href='https://library.ucsd.edu/speccoll/findingaids/mss0075.html'>UC San Diego Archives</a></li>
<li><a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Silliman'>Wikipedia</a></li>
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<h2 class='title'>Ketjak</h2>
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<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php">I: The Age of Huts<br /><br /></a>             <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/u_VsYLU9NS_tJXOrl6A4RM1Dne7QkuSslpBc0StgKSXXoIDStYoXqSwDo2tuxST00QD3ynVJH4yjAhcEzTWyM0F_RriCRx9yZdyygceY2wm-%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br />II: Tjanting<br /><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/tjanting-9781876857196"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/efy1lIcVIKeKSdy_WUDIxV8WLN0OJmA3f7enQ2XDwxwt7Bh5ssfQQAkW_o4oG6FqrB1RGf7CX-Rw-VQ4u36RIuwSsCMxWjjHFDP4c7CbW2d_%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx">III: The Alphabet<br /><br /></a><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx"><img id="ctl00_MainContent_ProductInfo1_ctl00_PrimaryImage_PrimaryImage" onclick="javascript:window.open(&#39;http://www.uapress.ua.edu//images/temp/212-1897-Product_LargeToMediumImage.jpeg&#39;, 1, &#39;resizable=1, width=500, height=700&#39;)" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/OnaMjXm2h6XxneM04RgHx1Bkf2Wi9UE3a8c3o0NDvW5wXo7BK3MaM5VP9YfbEIpHYxAstTorwhNW4lhhkNuua5bDX7Ogr2UgZ1NMDDjeh-0bNnuo-WH-9pGHIR6lv-4-_UDHVNe36xB6%3Ds0-d" style="border: 1px solid Gray;" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div>IV. from Universe</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
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<h2 class='title'>Other Books in Print</h2>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">MEMOIRS &amp; COLLABORATIONS</span><br /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Leningrad-American-Writers-Soviet-Union/dp/1562790056">Leningrad</a><br /><a href="http://www.thegrandpiano.org/">The Grand Piano</a><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/under-albany-9781844710515">Under Albany</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">CRITICISM</span><br /><a href="http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/0937804207/the-new-sentence.aspx">The New Sentence</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ANTHOLOGY</span><br /><a href="https://secure.touchnet.com/C22921_ustores/web/classic/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=327&SINGLESTORE=true">In The American Tree</a><br /><br /><br /><br />
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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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