> >What do you mean "the page layout expects something to happen, which
> doesn't"?<
>
> what I think I meant was that the layout of Ashbery's poems raise the
> expectation of syntactic normality in graphic form and there isn't
> (unlike,
> say, Mallarme) any kind of dialectic with that form, rather just its
> frustration. I never get any sense of conflict in Ashbery. It's very very
> comfortable with itself. It's elegant, stylish, pleasing to hear, and in
> some ways a modern equivalent to Tennyson (a poet I believe he rather
> admires)
the ashbery i've read is actually pretty normal syntactically. but it's not
semantically normal, or perhaps not narratively normal. like in
http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Ashbery/Ashbery-John_Flow-Chart_WBAI_NY_4-25-91.mp3
(recording from http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Ashbery.php )
which is mostly from 'flow chart', which is sometimes described as a 'stream
of consciousness poem'.
it is quite narrativistic. it sounds much like a story, actually. but the
sequence of events moves between the physical and the mental in unusual
ways.
i've never read anything by him that was particularly angry or bitter or
cruel or even unkind. or 'political'.
i doubt he has offended very many people.
did tennyson?
ja
|