Anatomy of a Poem – John Ashbery

The poem I’ll be discussing today is ‘The Ecclesiast’ by John Ashbery – I’ll be doing so in the same context as previous; that is with the specific intent of uncovering more about the nature of poetry itself – as such my analysis will pay no attention to the work of Ashbery as a whole body with a common thematic structure which might assist in the task of analysis, this discussion is restricted to the poem itself, considered not in the context of the poet but in the context of poetry as an abstract art-form.

In case you don’t own a copy yourself you can find it here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/61841189/Ashbery-John-Selected-Poems pg 68.

Okay onto the real work -

Firstly we’re not dealing with the kind of backdrop we found in both previous poems (Heaney, Wordsworth) where there was a single, coherent environment taking the form of a clear narrative which the reader was drawn into, where that environment was constructed out of actual personal experiences – instead we’re looking at something a little more complicated, a little more modern. Let’s do a little preparatory work before we make the real incisions here and talk about the kinds of support structures we see in various poems that provide the surrounding framework in which the reading of the poem takes place.

I think three divisions are merited here, largely poets can use a single, coherent backdrop, usually based on a real experience that has a clear, progressing narrative [1], an emotional state or single thought which is then drawn out throughout the course of the poem [2], or the reader him/herself is used as the grounds of the poem with the poem drawing itself against this common ground of human experience, rolling over it, weathering it with the intention of revealing something within this continuous movement of images and thoughts [3] –  at least this is the case where the personal voice of the poet is present, otherwise it is possible to count a fourth, where there is the use of a metaphorical structure to explore an issue in the vein of storytelling, though this is discontinuous for me from the poetic tradition proper [4]. Here’s a list to elucidate.

[1]: Wordsworth – Tintern Abbey, crucial is the laying out of the environment in which the poem takes place, the reader moves through this descriptive creation of a surrounding context.

[2]: Yeats – Circus Animals Desertion, a state of emotional and intellectual unrest at the approach of death is the basis, the grounds of this poem, is where it takes place, where it ventures out from.

[3]: T.S. Eliot – Four Quartets, the grounds of this poem is the common ground of world [the extended set of all things we can have knowledge about].

[4]: Milton  - Paradise Lost, a large, heavy mythological framework is used for an exploration of an idea which is extended as one would find in the novel but intense and pure enough to remain connected to the language of poetic speech.

So for [1] we can say that the images are fixed as they are drawn from an actual experience, the narrative too must be cohesive in its progression because to invite discord into the backdrop the poet is creating is to invite the disintegration of the poem – it is believed in this case that some realisation is intrinsically attached to a fixed narrative usually directly experienced by the poet, perhaps it is better to say that some realisation is reached naturally through some definite experience and therefore the environment of that definite experience becomes the dominant supportive structure of the poem. See Coleridge’s Frost at Midnight for example. The poetic intellect is in these cases acutely aware but passive, inspiration plays a key role in this kind of poetry.

And similarly . . . . .

[2] we can say that the poem’s imagery and structure will be tied down to the given emotional-intellectual state and will consist in a set of metaphors, sounds, explorations that swivel about this state, that constantly refer back to it. In this case the central theme is held up and the set of images and sounds which spiral about it are deemed to continuously enrich the given theme until at some point something is gleaned from that state and this concludes the poem – or terminates the successive flow of imagery. See Vallejo’s ‘Los heraldos negros’ although in this case it is more an example of the failure to draw anything more, anything therapeutic from the poetic exploration of the given state. In these cases we should note that the poet starts out trying to dispel or come to terms with the state. In this case the poetic intellect is both active and passive, it passively enters into a state of emotional- intellectual unrest or excitement and it works on this state furiously by means of a set of images and sounds that are expressive of this state – in this way [2] appears the opposite of [1] the emotional-intellectual state is the basis of the poem not what is reached at its conclusion.

[3] we can say here that the object of the poem is what is being made clear through the course of the poem and therefore cannot itself appear as the foundation of the poem. The poem is a set of sounds and images that bore away at what is known only vaguely until, if successful, something reveals itself in this continuous movement of recycled images kept coherent by a basic rhythmic structure that is normally not formal. The poem in this case sets out to seek, it doesn’t yet have its object properly fixed, in this case then the poem is a kind of discovery for the poet him or herself as what it eventually uncovers is the kind of objective ground which had been previously concealed beneath the vibrant, impatient activity of life. It must therefore run itself over the object directly – that is it must take a universal in the truest sense for its object, for its ground. See Rilke’s ‘To Music’ or Zbigniew Herbert’s ‘Study of the Object’ – in this case the poetic intellect is entirely active as it takes for itself an object and works on it, there is no need for inspiration because the poet reaches out to grasp a feature of the world and deal with it directly.

I won’t get into [4] here as I’m probably boring you to death, haven’t even touched the actual Ashbery poem yet.

My copy of Ashbery's selected

So pretty quickly I can now identify this poem as having two basic structural characteristics – firstly that it falls into [3] that is that there is a continuous flow of contrasting images which are connected by a common theme that they are stubbornly uncovering or weathering. In this case there is no logic to the introduction of images that could be deemed progressively coherent, either in the sense of a clear narrative or the careful construction of a total image – there is more the feel of conversation, the unthinking out-slinging of lines that are connected only by coming from the same state of mind as opposed to being linked in their own individual form. Secondly that there is a faint detection of place introduced during the concluding stanza which is tonally connected to the entire poem and gives a very light, ragged sense of continuity to the piece.

This is reflective of the poet at work because a faint, rather frail sense of place is a handy equivalent to a conversational, unfocused state of mind. The poem therefore has a feel of various ruminations connected by their common point of origin [as opposed to a more desirable thematic consistency] which pass outward, hover for a moment and then are drawn back inwards. To give the poem a fixed placed where the voice of the poem remains static is to give these images a point to return to and dissolve themselves in. It also gives an ability to resolve or conclude without a finality of tone, various considerations mature and then dissipate in the poet [who is present in the poem's structure] thus the poem beings and ends in this state of mind, this conversation – which gives us that distinct sense that nothing has been ventured or reached in the poem of substance but this has nothing to do with whether or not the poem is meaningful and more to do with the poem’s basic structure, which by taking an unfocused point of reflective activity as its centre necessitates a short-life span for all raised considerations – in this kind of poem many things flourish and die and none find themselves concluded in a satisfactory manner.

“Fine vapours escape from whatever is doing the living. / The night is cold and delicate and full of angels / Pounding down on the living. The factories are all lit up, / The chime goes unheard. / We are together at last, though far apart.”

This would be the final stanza which establishes a fixed place where the poem dissolves into itself, that is back into the point it originally emanated from.

How is this for a poetic methodology? Not bad. It’s more diverse, there’s a great variety of images that don’t necessarily relate in any obvious way to one another which results in a density and intricacy of sound which is lacking in both the case of Heaney and Wordsworth. We tend to, in our comfortable criticism of literary modernism, forget the sparse texture of English poetry from Wordsworth through to Tennyson, a sparsity which in the case of the latter seriously limited his capacity to engage meaningfully with his experience of grief and loss. English language poetry in particular suffers a great deal from a conservative attitude to the way in which a poem is structured [I'm not speaking here of formal verse, it is a testament to how flaccid the serious study of poetry has been that its technical aspects have been ignored or treated as consisting of 'inherited formal verse structures' - this could also read as the curse of the idiot's distinction that is the running dichotomy of truth-value and emotional-value as mutually exclusive and part of different realms, as in Science/Art, real intellectual trash right there] an unflinching attachment to simple, cohesive landscapes, small fracture-less experiences as poems. The guilty include Wordsworth, Byron-Shelley-Keats [whose appeal to classical mythology is a sign of overriding weakness in terms of imagination], Swinburne, Tennyson, Hopkins, Auden, Bishop, Lowell, Hughes – exceptions include Eliot, Yeats and Larkin [Larkin is the only English poet of his kind who is slyly, unexpectedly and brilliantly transcendental].

It must be said however that the lack of desire on the part of the poet to develop raised considerations that is reflected in the structures he chooses for his poems – well at least for this poem condemn him has uninterested in the final purpose of poetry. That is to say that any kind of final conclusion or attempt to settle things, to resolve things is simply absent – by choice. You might say that Pound isn’t himself in control of the imagery he creates and is mastered by it while Ashbery simply isn’t interested in doing much else with it. Both are therefore examples of failed imagery which finds a life of its own outside the traditional task of the poem.

I’ll be hopefully moving onto to Rilke [as promised] next.