Dear Andrew
You, Andrew Jackson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:-
Having discussed music in this way, I'm forced to confront my own
resistance to experimental poetries -- a good thing. But do
I have to read Ashbery?? Bores me to tears for some reason . . . .
as does the almost-identical stuff written by James Tate.
Well, I'd like to say that fineness is the main reason for reading
the poetry of John Ashbery, whom I don't find even similar to
James Tate. If I might post from a 1998 review in Heat 10, where
his Wakefulness collection was the subject at hand:-
Text below is quoted from a review of Ashbery's Wakefulness
by Hugh Tolhurst:-
A good book on Ashbery's work is The Tribe of John
(University of Alabama Press, 1995) which grew out of
an Ashbery feature issue of Verse magazine, a lively international
poetry journal whose editor Brian Henry has been in Australia compiling
an issue to feature Australian poetry. Fred Moromarco's essay in
The Tribe of John concludes with an appendix listing many of the lines
of "Life" metaphors which appear in Ashbery's poems. This quest for
the wholly definitive continues in Wakefulness with a variety of stabs at it
from the modest self-reflexive, 'In short I am this comedy you wrote
for me to star in' (from "The Spacious Firmament") to the sustained
oddity of the "Life" metaphor found within the poem "Tropical Sex".
Or picture an insect struggling.
But it's going to be alright I tell you.
We can live in The Heights and conjecture interestingly
about how life is made, how a man is paid
after all the contracts and ledgers are signed, blotted
in the sun. And surely one can stagger then,
get up and stagger to the nearest public telephone
and make slurping sounds at an invisible opponent: gone, warned
away, washed away.
It is part of the music of Ashbery that a poem might make use of words
as abstract as 'conjecture interestingly' and yet also those strong,
seemingly
unpoetic words 'blotted' (such a good word) and 'slurping sounds'. There
is a hint of menace underneath the tonal cheerfulness. Is it to cry for help
that one makes these 'slurping sounds' and why are they to 'an invisible
opponent'? That which we are not told robs the scene of fully explicable
meaning; was it alcohol or a knife-wound that caused this figure to need to
'get up and stagger' and is this a picture of a failing relationship or a
failing
pulse? As with a street drama encountered by chance, we don't know.
And the poem has other things to do. As it says later on, 'Remember to vote.
The clothesline has fallen / to the enemy somewhere. Yet the awnings are
still
prim and / conspiratorial'.
These sorts of contrasts and tensions between tone and import are not
uncommon
in Wakefulness, the very first poem closes with the uneasy aphorism. 'No
matter
how you / twist it, / life stays frozen in the headlights. / Funny, none of
us heard
the roar'. Late in the collection there is even a note of skewed redemptive
prayer,
close to but not quite the melancholy of the late poems of other masters,
And when twilight licks appreciatively at the sky,
your answer will be there in the circuitry,
not bypassed. For you to hold,
to genuflect with.
("Gentle Reader")
Hugh Tolhurst
----- Original Message -----
From: Andrew Jackson <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2000 11:26 AM
Subject: Re: poets who eschew clarity
> Hi Wystan,
>
> The thing is though, there's also a massive amount of what
> could be described as modernist art which is so unmissable --
> there's that wonderful image of riots breaking out during the
> first performance of The Rite of Spring, with some tuxedoed
> old buffer repeatedly thumping the head of the poor individual
> seated in front of him. What was once shocking has become
> popular. Same with Messiaen -- ever sat down to the Turangalila
> Symphony? Terrific!! One of my favourite pieces of music.
> Same goes for Bartok and Ravel. On the other hand, I loathe
> all that post-Romantic German stuff, the Brahms-Schubert-
> Schumann brigade.
>
> In other words, 'difficulty' has (perhaps like water) found its
> level. Picasso is a perfect example.
>
> Which takes us onto Ashbery, who apparently thinks he's doing
> the 'same thing' as Picasso . . . .
>
> I would perhaps suggest that language is, somehow, more
> fragile than either music or art. In theory, there should be no
> reason why postmodern-inspired poetry shouldn't be met with
> the same enthusiasm as Messiaen at the Proms . . . . but this
> doesn't seem to hold true in the same way.
>
> Perhaps because both music and art are accepted as abstracts,
> as 'art'. Language is something everyone has, and serves a
> varying amount of strict functions. To deconstruct it, to play
> with it excessively, seems to produce a kind of anxiety,
> or a type of resistance. The linguists on this list
> (try saying that after ten pints of Old Jock) may be able to bring
> their knowledge into this . . . . . Bill also made this point about
> an-other language a while back.
>
> Having discussed music in this way, I'm forced to confront my own
> resistance to experimental poetries -- a good thing. But do
> I have to read Ashbery?? Bores me to tears for some reason . . . .
> as does the almost-identical stuff written by James Tate.
>
> Mind you, I *did* enjoy that poem ending in 'trilobite trilobites'
> posted recently, against all expectations . . . .
>
> What's on the table? I really don't know . . . . even as something
> of a formalist, the New Formalist model seems rather unappetising.
>
> Cassie --
>
> >assume they won't 'get it' unless we speak extra slowly and distinctly.<
>
> No, not this -- more the sense that, for whatever reason, the
> wider art-consuming public aren't as adventurous in their reading
> matter as they are with respect to the visual arts or music.
> This may be a gross misapprehension on my part though . . .
> I mean a Swedish workmate of mine was quite happily reading
> 'Trainspotting'. The question then, I guess, is the gravitation
> towards narrative as opposed to lyric occurrance. Perhaps for the same
> reason that for every fan of Messiaen there's ten thousand
> of Brahms . . . . and always will be, I suspect. Which is not to
> diminish the latter as a composer, only to say that there are tonal
> comfort zones which are particularly cherished. Perhaps the
> same could be said with regard to poetry? Not sure . . . .
>
> My 'moan' is simply that poetry too often seems to fall outside the
> zone . . . for reasons I'm not smart enough to figure out.
>
> Anyway, enough rambling -- no doubt I've lost the thread by now . . .
>
>
> Andy
>
>
>
>
>
>
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