Title
Author(s)
Citation
Issue Date
URL
Polarities : A Study of John Ashbery's "The Tennis Court Oath
Ford, Mark
英文学評論 (1993), 65: 39-80
1993-03
https://dx.doi.org/10.14989/RevEL_65_39
Right
Type
Textversion
Departmental Bulletin Paper
publisher
Kyoto University
Polarities
: A Study
of John Ashbery's
"The Tennis
Court Oath"
Mark
The status
of The Tennis
always
been, and probably
lication
in 1962
expressions
reviews
of polite
Review seriously
Court
always
ranging
grappled
with
the critic
nature
it, though
encouraging
Ashbery's
works has
It drew
from contemptuous
Only
the
within
be, problematic.
mainly
about
were not overall
Oath1
will
puzzlement.2
book, and his conclusions
ceptive,
Ford
dismissals
R. W. Flint
of Ashbery's
on pub-
of Partisan
poetry
in many places
to
in this
extremely
per-
:
In John Ashbery
the dazzling
vatic style of Dylan Thomas or Roethke's
"The
Shape of the Fire" has become something
cool, business-like
and very peculiar...3
Flint
declares
himself
edness"
but after
"a tonal
unity
tionally
understood,
at first
prolonged
dismayed
"immersion"
in no way dependent
but
things
are coming apart,
or just
becoming
of-fact
way."
rather
receding
uncomfortable
This
last
by the
cluster
poems' "extreme disjoint-
in them
discovers
they
possess
on meter or even cadence
on a cadence
into
night
in a peculiarly
of opposed
of feeling-sight
and distance,
sober,
adjectives
convenin which
clouding
over,
visionary,
matter-
certainly
reflects
40
Polarities
something
: A Study of John Ashbery 's "The Tennis Court Oath"
of the
book's
pervasive
judiciously
locates
the poetry's
intensive
deployment
with
unitary
psychological
spirit
central
trope
poet's
desire
the
self
of self-contradiction.
of most Romantic
of ellipsis,
Flint
also
and connects
to escape
concepts
its
of the
and post-Romantic
poetry
:
It is not yet successful
but it is interesting.
There is no inevitability
about it,
at least to my eyes and ears, but rather an intense scholastic
energy of exclusion, comparable
to the Thomist
energy of inclusion.
If you assume, as many
of Ashbery's
confreres
seem to, that poetry
has degenerated
into technical
formulae and rhetorical
gimmicks...
then there might be a virtue in not only
confounding
conventional
prosody and rhetoric
- this has been done already but also the progressions
of mood and tone which identify
a poet as a creature
of conventional
psychology,
vulnerable
to condescension.4
Another
genre,
aim of this
with
"energy
all subsumed
sciously,
stract
echoes
Expressionist
is surely
; "the
and historical
Flint
is the near-abolition
into an aesthetic
neous and single-toned
confessional,
of exclusion"
here
painting
a more apposite
that
Flint
lyric,
- all at once and uniformly."
kinds
was often
context
than
of critical
discussed
of
sees as both simulta-
poem is to be philosophical,
the
of ideas
visionary,
Perhaps
language
in which
at the time,
the one he in fact
unconAb-
and which
goes on to sug-
gest:
I have deduced this program myself from reading
Mr Ashbery's
appallingly
inconclusive
verse, behind which looms the oldest Ez of the thin late Cantos.5
Later
critics
have also been struck
uncompromising
arbitrariness.
by The Tennis Court Oath's
Even those
favourable
seemingly
to Ashbery's
enter-
Polarities : A Study of John Ashbery's "The Tennis Court Oath"
prise
in the
complains
"remain
main
that
have expressed
the words
excessively
frustration
with
in a poem like
discrete,
refusing
"Leaving
to group
configurations,"
so that
in the end the reader
bored." 6 Helen
Vendler
reports
Oath's
"mixture
Bloom's
of wilful
response
flashiness
bery
into
such a bog by just
of The Tennis
Kline,
Webern
the notion
that
the only
to have attempted
In addition,
its merits
Station"
into
larger
to grow "restless
and
by The Tennis
Court
sentimentality,"7
while
He finds
Harold
in the book
and wonders how Ashbery
six years
this
after
Some Trees...
was a necessary
for who can hope to find
Fred
about
the Atocha
"could
The Ash-
Court Oath may have been moved by De Kooning
incoherence."8
critics
Perloff
and Cage, but he was not moved to the writing
Nor can I accept
development,
begins
and disbelief."
World")
Marjorie
themselves
unimpressed
and
was one of "outrage
only one good poem ("A Last
collapse
herself
it.
41
Moramarco,
Ashbery
himself
David
any necessity
Shapiro
a sustained
has repeatedly
of poems.
phase in the poet's
in this
and John
defence
and
calculated
Shoptaw
are
of the collection.9
expressed
uncertainty
:
I was experimenting
at the time. I was dissatisfied
with the poetry that I was
writing,
and I was trying to do something
new. My way of doing this was by
deliberately
avoiding
writing
poetry
that sounded
like the poetry
I had
already written - even though it didn't
sound like anything.
That seemed to
be the best way of starting
to get away from what I had written
before hoping that something
valuable
would come out of it. Although
I don't think
that that poem ["Europe"]
is very successful,
it was a way of trying to obliterate the poetry that at the time was coming naturally
to me, and which I
didn't like.
It was an attempt to shuffle
the cards before dealing
them again;
it was more of a therapy
for me than anything
that was meant to go into
print.
I am not displeased
that it was published,
but I look at it very much as
42
Polarities
: A Study of John Ashbery's "The Tennis Court Oath"
part of a transitional
His
Selected
thirty-one
phase.10
Poems (1985)
includes
poems, and these
only
are mainly
as "They Dream Only of America"
he declared
: "I published
of what
does like
diate
style,
but didn't."
the book
but
determined
quality
why I stopped
while
the
in the book's
gated
but
poem like
cher..."
ability
Tennis
oscillate
Court
of intermepoem "Eu-
way, but
I feel
have gone on pur-
with
and confuse.
The
of Ashbery's
extremes,
its bland
grandiose
to Inhabit
the dry impenetrable
interspliced
throughout
the
breathlessly
"Europe"
oddity
mediating
powers of syn-
The potentially
I Be Able
and seem
- the tentative
of experience
poems, or with
disconcerting
is
dualistic
between
he might
"transitional,"
kinds
collage
Oath's
was merely
verse, with
disparate
whole.
strangely
other
one of which
to achieve
later
to combine
contrasts
styles,
anxiously
"How Much Longer Will
fiction
"a kind
I might
out a lot
The poems he
that
power to infuriate
- or are unable
homogenous
some of the
writing
the most starkly
of so much of Ashbery's
its
pulp
poems
to reject
thesis,
in what he calls
I shouldn't
take
me."ll
such
interview
poems in Some Trees and the
Tennis Court Oath is unequivocally
; its
In another
I would
interests
two different
didn't,
an element
collections
pieces
12
between
have developed
again
poems in a new way that
The division
certainly
the
know quite
are valid
the less experimental
some of it still
between
I don't
those
suing,
say
Court Oath's
Court Oath and perhaps
from the book were written
rope"...
that
submitting
is in it, although
of The Tennis
and "Our Youth."
The Tennis
have done so. If I were
eight
into
a varie-
rhetoric
of a
the Divine
Sepul-
newspaperese
banal
and "Idaho."
comes from this
snippets
Part
lack
of
of
of The
of com-
Polarities
munication
: A Study of John Ashbery's
between
its idioms.
ly or parodically
a poetic
poems, let
as arbiter
aesthetic
alone
displacement
of the
self,
attempt
self
of their
to dismantle
the
minded
fashion
trappings,
articulates
ernist
:
even playful-
de-mythologizing
scale,
almost
For all its
in a quite
"mass of
The
single-
psychologi-
in the name of a greater
his dissatisfaction
epic
Bloom's,
the centripetal
of Pierre
of its
The continual
of Harold
as embodying
on the poetry
most explicitly
lyric.
a phrase
for ways of evading
An essay of Ashbery's
also in 1962,
Symbolist
can be understood
a search
its reticent
43
as the origin
meanings.
book to a larger
to use
cal ego, and all its allegorical
legacy
be construed
possible
next
organic
disjunctiveness,"13
Court Oath
also to introduce
of Some Trees, with
way in this
Tennis
It refuses
who might
gives
egregious
"The Tennis Court Oath"
Reverdy,
with
mimesis.
published
the Mod-
A l'inverse
des ecrivains
importants
de langue anglaise
de ce siecle
(Eliot,
Pound, Yeats, Joyce),
Reverdy parvient
a restituer
aux choses leur vrai nom,
a abolir l'6ternel
poids mort de symbolisme
et d'allegorie
qui excede chez les
auteurs que j'ai cites.
Dans The Waste Land d'Eliot,
le monde reel apparait
avec les reves qui lui sont propres,
mais il est toujours
artificiellement
lie a
une signification
allegorique
- l'usine a gaz et le "dull canal", par exemple.
Tandis que chez Reverdy un canal ou une usine sont des ph6nomenes vivants,
ils font partie
du monde qui nous entoure, dont le souffle
cru se fait sentir
partout
dans sa poesie.
C'est comme si on voyait pour la premiere
fois un
paysage naturel,
n'ayant vu jusque la que des paysages
peints.
J'ai toujours
regrette
que les rythmes sombres d'Eliot
et de Yeats, par exemple,
soient
au service d'une signification
precise,
et que leur elans poetiques
differents,
en cela, du faucon de Yeats - soient comme un cerf-volant
dont le
fil est fermement
tenu par le poete rive a sa terre. Ce qui nous enchante chez
Reverdy, c'est la puret6
de sa poesie, faite de changements,
fluctuations,
arcM-
44
Polarities
: A Study of John Ashbery's
"The Tennis Court Oath"
types d'evenements,
situations
ideales,
mouvements de formes transparentes,
aussi naturels
et varies que les vagues de la mer. C'est l'etoffe
meme de la
poesie, sa matiere premiere pure de toute arriere-pensee
metaphysique.14
The "open field
of narrative
Tennis Court Oath explores
store
to things
discover
their
real
some unifying
from "They
possibilities"
(TP,
can be seen in these
names and so to escape
mythical
significance
Dream Only of America"
offer
p.41)
the
poetic
terms,
as an effort
the burden
to re-
of having
in all events.15
a comic
of The
to
Some lines
version
of this
an-
xiety:
Now he cared
only about
Was the cigar
a sign?
signs.
And what about the key?
He went slowly
into
the bedroom.
(TCO,
This
dilemma
by the
with
which
they
excitement
evoke
exotic
more conventional
hibit
a far less stable
outside
to which
dramatically
in Some Trees but is generally
defused
and sureness,
novelty
landscapes
it is trying
to discover
Even the
the
poetic
self
and the world
Many of these
seem to fluctuate
solipsism
and a sense of help-
an unaccommodating
unable
pleasurable
in The Tennis Court Oath ex-
between
to relate.
the
and dream-states.
poems collected
relationship
between
dispersal,
absolute
a middle
ground
between
these
two
opposites.
Both
trate
present
poems' lyrical
earlier
less
is certainly
p. 13)
this
of the
tendency
irregular
towards
sonnets
polarities.
in "Two Sonnets,"
The first
is called
for example,
"Dido" :
illus-
Polarities
: A Study
of John Ashbery's
"The Tennis
The body's products
become
Fatal to it. Our spit
Would kill us, but we
Die of our heat.
Though I say the things
I wish to say
They are needless, their own flame conceives
So I am cheated of perfection.
Court Oath"
45
it.
The iodine bottle sat in the hall
And out over the park where crawled roadsters
The apricot and purple clouds were
And our blood flowed down the grating
Of the cream-colored
embassy.
Inside it they had a record of "The St. Louis Blues."
(TCO,
The first
self's
half
of the poem suggests
inversions
say the things
result
to this
alien
to say deprives
where
to terminate
contracted
the poet
of jerky
disjunctiveness.
tablish
between
the
iodine
embassy must be purely
phrase
inspiration
about
effects
of this
ment:
"And our blood
the
speculative.
him, "marrying
involvement
flowed
world,
equally
responsible
the sestet
and objects,
roadsters,
connected
so they
conceals
for them,
a wholly
only
by a
manages to es-
and the cream-coloured
Here Ashbery
seems to be, in Frank
the whole world,"16
seems to be some kind
down the grating..."
to
In contrast
presents
the reader
The
freedom
of perfection."
Any relations
bottle,
complete
seems no longer
images
tautology.
his words of all context
of their
inner
of random
syntax
O'Hara's
; his
them : "So I am cheated
self-divided
aggregation
of dangerous
redundancy
and the "flame"
them to the point
nor able
in a fatal
he wishes
become "needless,"
a state
p. 20)
and one of the
of Orphic
dismember-
The poem exists
in
46
Polarities
the contrast
: A Study of John Ashbery
between
the imploding
and the meaningless
self
is dispersed
in the second
The second
sealed
angularity
sonnet,
subjectivity
self-enclosure
of the outside
Idiot,"
also
Ignorant
an equally
careless
world
of me is ! Those
rocks,
Know not the touch
world
opposes
uncontrolled
with the landscape.
The poem is couched
and may allude obliquely
back to Mallarme's
0 how this sullen,
of the first
seven
amongst
lines
which
the
six lines.
"The
with
's "The Tennis Court Oath"
those
of my flesh,
images
desire
of a tightly
to merge wholly
in a mock-Romantic
"Brise Marine" :17
diction,
homes
nor is there
one tree
Whose shade has known me for a friend.
I've wandered
the wide
world over.
No man I've known, no friendly
beast
Has come and put its nose into my hands.
No maid has welcomed
Yet once, as I took
From Gibraltar
my face with
passage
to Cape Horn
1 met some friendly
mariners
And as we struggled
to keep
on the boat
the ship
The very waves seemed friendly,
The spray
a kiss.
made as it hit
the front
from sinking
and the sound
of the boat.
(TCO,
The plangent
extremes
of non-existence,
stock
Romantic
one tree
/ Whose
community
of the Idiot's
solitude
and the stiltedness
concepts
shade
he recalls
of the
of a benign
reduce
him to a state
language
responsive
subtly
nature
has known me for a friend."
in the sestet
also expands
p. 20)
comically
almost
undermines
- "nor is there
The moment of
beyond
one's
Polarities
expectations.
but
: A Study of John Ashbery's "The Tennis Court Oath"
The Idiot
feels
close
not only
to the waves and spray threatening
mitment
poetic
to the outside
self
can find
world,
to sink
once released,
no middle
to the
"friendly
the ship.
mariners,"
Again
is in excess,
way between
47
severe retreat
his com-
suggesting
the
and indiscrimi-
nate involvement.
The formal
in opposition,
Oath they
diction
Able
divisions
but
in most
seem the normal
searching
the
for itself
itself
a poetic
continually
the poet whenever
chral
cell.
proach
"How Much Longer
dramatizations
identity
offers
a condition
of the Romantic
at once coherent
by the abysses
lines
again contrast
for accommodation
of contra-
What about
Will
in the world
ego trying
and responsive,
of the infinite
that
I Be
most
to
only
con-
of his own sepul-
different
modes of ap-
:
Howmuch longer will I be able to inhabit
the divine sepulcher
Of life, my great love?
Do dolphins
plunge bottomward
To find the light?
Or is it rock
That is searched?
Unrelentingly?
Huh. And if some day
Men with orange shovels come to break
Which encases me, what about the light
What about the smell of the light?
Court
one of the book's
he emerges from the privacy
The poem's opening
to the quest
of affairs.
Sepulcher..."
neatly
poems in The Tennis
making
thwarted
front
of the
intertwined,
state
Divine
and exhilarating
establish
of the rest
are more complexly
to Inhabit
to find
of "Two Sonnets" keep the two extremes
open the rock
that comes in then?
the moss?
(TCO,
p. 25)
48
Polarities
Two dominant
: A Study of John Ashbery's "The Tennis Court Oath"
strains
of Romanticism
here ; on the one hand there
depths
of the
self
light?"),
and
worthian
attention
on the
is searched?"
Both
knight
facts
passive
poet
analogue
that
less
found
/
times
I only
then
- "Or is it rock
inert
Ashbery
figured
more whimsical,
most suits
hell
(and
lines
the poet is that
is a furnace
sometimes
some erotic
me
choking
I hear
suggest
in the sestet
me
salt
water
dripping).
a variation
of the
The visitation
"Dido"
on the
sonnet,
emasculates
p. 25)
artist-as-victim
and elsewhere
and punishes,
theme
in-
in the collection
and the resulting
is unendurable.
Together
limitations
these
of the
no real suprise
that
modulating
three
("the
at this
randomly,
neat
stanzas
Romantic
the few / To have held
fiction,
of Keats's
lie
also
as a whole.20
start
as
roundabout
(TCO,
clarity
/ That
("Huh"),
term, is provisionally
by
the
more Words-
Dame Sans Merci," 19 suffering
he wounded
My bed of light
timated
To find
mythopoeic,
goofily
in the
:
Since
These
each other
of truth
bottomward
of existence
by the
in "La Belle
In pilgrim
With
is the
18 to use Bloom's
typically
enchantment
there
off against
idea
plunge
are rejected
means. The Romantic
paralyzed
dolphins
other
influx,"
the
is the Coleridgean
to the natural
and the "Orphic
reaching
("Do
are played
villa!...
seem to push up insistently
lyric,21
point
almost
to exhaust
the poem abruptly
from childhood
my breath
under
its resources,
shifts
boasting
the
so it is
gear ; its idioms
("because
the house"),
If you knew why then
against
to scraps
professor"),
I'm one of
of pulp
to chance
Polarities
memories
: A Study
of sex ("the
summer afternoons
breaks
of John Ashbery's
smell
within
Roussel's
Nouvelles
by
poem undercuts
mantic
myth-making
with
in general
Shapiro
is surely
right
food
to relate
that
Prufrock's
of this
in the
depends
mimics
moment is an instant
the literal,
random
way predicted
communications
disjunctive
of the discontinu-
touching
pro-
genitals..."
of the snares
spiritual
of the
truth,
on the shore...?
or will forever
remain
be haunted
impressions
by a bee
of human
and his
of human communication
in "Le livre
of
the protagonist
transcendental,
that
est sur la table"
heaven
a dwarf,
brain
be a tree,
most
occurs in
: "Are there
" (ST, p. 75) :
Though a perfect one, and possessing
a normal-sized
But he has got to be released
by giants from things.
And as the plant grows older it realizes
it will never
always
stupid
of Ro-
and the everyday
And would be a mathematician.
But where in unsuitable
Can he get the heat that will make him grow?
Will probably
And cultivates
fash-
aspirations
What a marvel is ancient man !
Under the tulip roots he has figured out a way to be a religious
For he needs something
of
but whereas it is implied
on a rejection
ideas
satisfying
/ Collisions,
Prufrock,"23
name of some higher
poem merely
awareness
manner
the poem back to some of the concerns
in "The Love Song of J. Alfred
salvation
of the grand
to mouth,
completely
in the
In typically
sex, low-brow reading,
Eliot
attachments
something
a more average
- "Carrying
/ On hot
and its syntax
d'Afrique.22
49
down toilets
sea"),
its formulation
of childhood,
cesses
of the
flushed
parentheses
Impressions
ion the
ous banalities
of sperm
sight
down, disrupted
"The Tennis Court Oath"
animal
50
Polarities
: A Study of John Ashbery 's "The Tennis
So as not to become part
Is mounting
like
Shaking
hands
That give our
Hands that are
On mirrors for
a sea.
of the dirt.
Court Oath"
The dirt
And we say goodbye
in front of the crashing
of the waves
words lonesomeness, and make these
always writing
things
people to see later.
flabby
hands
(TCO,
Dwarfs
and giants
such a polarized
tically
occur
context
juxtaposed.
with
seems also
the
ignored,
dirt
with
powers
suggest
at least
"mounting
and intensify
gility
and realism
Like
lines
verbal
moment trails
perience
return
but
the possibility
fear
instance
of which
which,
stalks
however
hands"
are
oblique
or
of interaction.
have something
so
and they
of the waves" both
"Lay your sleeping
con-
flabby
possessed,
in
empha-
affecting
of "these
of some kind
The lines
rarely
most unflinching
nature
a sea" and "the crashing
The
threaten
of the precious
fra-
head, my love, / Human
arm..."24
Ashbery's
or privileged
discussed
worlds
trivial
infinite,
physical
but
and tree are likewise
the book's
of communication
of Auden's
Auden's,
by epiphanies
this
p. 26)
poetry
moment, redemptively
the moment.
on my faithless
the
like
that
of the
The puny
them to be, in the
endowed
The plant
to release
immensity
many of its poems.
allows
as here.
in Ashbery's
It is interesting
of human contact
frontation
frequently
seem ours
of the
above
poetry
moments.
an attempt
poems toward
off jaggedly,
is emphatically
and less
not
one determined
Moramarco correctly
"to soar
outward
some ineffable
exciting
to the poem. The poet retreats
in
from the purely
perception,"25
or articulable
into
discerns
the guise
but the
areas
of ex-
of comic
in-
Polarities
competent:
: A Study of John Ashbery's
"But no doubt
fool..."
you have understood./
The "La Belle
stanza
of touchingly
After
which
"The Tennis
tenderness,
only
returns
explicitly
to be mockingly
which
I did,
owing
undone :
to your kindness.
You would not let me out for two days and three
me books bound
As if reading
in wild
had any interest
thyme
nights,
and scented
wild
grasses
for me, you...
(TCO,
The poem's ending
the poet's
which
in a
you led me to water
And bade me drink,
Bringing
51
It all now and I am a
Dame Sans Merci" motif
wistful
Court Oath"
anxiety
returns
about
he is trying
to the questioning
his identity
to locate
mode in which
and about
himself
p. 27)
the nature
collapses
all into
it began,
as
of the world
in
an indistinct
con-
tinuum:
Who are you, anyway?
And it is the
color
The darkness,
Because
of sand,
as it sifts
through
what does anything
your hand
mean...?
(TCO,
All
which
into
the
postures
the
its persona
has struggled
a gathering
"Two Sonnets"
schizophrenic
random infinite
poem has tried
awareness
to formulate
of the
and so many other
split
occurs,
the
and imprisoned
on, the
poet
abysses
pageant
himself,
of the
poems in the
p. 27)
of fictions
with
are dissolved
here
unknowable.
collection,
simultaneously
in the incommunicable
dispersed
As in
a kind
into
of
the
core of his sole
52
Polarities
self,
at once
: A Study of John Ashbery's
"marrying
everything"
"The Tennis Court Oath "
and shrunkenly
embalmed
in "lone-
someness" :
AmI wonder,
Strategically,
Of the
and in the light
long
sepulcher
that
hid death
and hides
me?
(TCO,
The oppositional
Oath,
nature
of so much of the poetry
its foregrounding
as an attempt
vasive
of the
to escape
a presence
of Stevens
and Whitman,"26
in their
see the book's
shattered
possible
whole,
or rhetorical
Court
shards
I Be Able
the
dilemma
scattered
to Inhabit
the
itself
of the failure
in this
jar
fragments
in
landscape.
splattered
Sensualists"
In "How Much
it is just
about
for the
of language
pp. 15-19)
(TCO,
- remain obstinately
as they
to
Through-
a trajectory
drips
(TCO,
though,
is deliberately
Sepulcher..."
"America"
poems recall
of what happens
Tennessee
poems are as interested
to understand
continuities
is dismantled.27
and deduce
or "The Ascetic
These
lyric
be seen
book Ashbery
also,
explorations
the Divine
is a self-contradiction
parts.
that
Court
who is so per-
It is possible
over the
poems like
Drama" (TCO, pp. 39-40)
sum of their
Stevens's
more comprehensively
make up the collage
whose title
style.
as more general
Oath
to reassemble
but
Stevens,
very few of these
self of the Romantic
and its
Longer Will
and certainly
experiments
The Tennis
might
a swerve away from the ruminative
diction
when the mediating
out
of Wallace
in Some Trees. Bloom argues
too massive
in The Tennis
and the discontinuous,
the influence
"attempted
Stevens
dual
p. 27)
or "A Life
pp. 51-54)
only
in dramatizing
are to illustrate
that
the
the
moments of
Polarities
: A Study of John Ashbery's "The Tennis Court Oath "
comprehension.28
organizing
Certainly
ego, their
innocent
they
streams
of purpose
succeed
in breaking
of disjunct
or meaning,
down notions
or repeated
remaining
just
53
images,
of the
seemingly
so much poetic
raw
material.
The contradictory
more suggestive
agery
nature
of experience
ways in other
shuttling
combining
between
is almost
opposite
them in the same sentence
Of bricks...
Who built
When love leans
Its nights...
it?
Like
points
as if the
some crazy balloon
turn
pavement
sticks
to our feet.
us back on love.
to a fallen
that
broke
when you entered
poetry
a kind
ing.
Like
cognition
exotic
other:
the
banal,
of see-saw quality
so many of the
of death
Much Longer
tions
and
of wild
Will
and the ephemeral,
are
that
book's
I Be Able
to Inhabit
and fearful
yoked
together
p. 41)
the nice and the
here,
is at once exhilarating
poems, "Our Youth"
and the disorientations
excitement
it
leaf.
As Moramarco29 has shown, the solid
the
poet
of view and haphazardly
(TCO,
nasty,
The im-
:
Where we are. Sometimes
The brick arches led to a room like a bubble,
And sometimes
oxymoronic,
of
on us
The velvety
The dead puppies
in a variety
poems in The Tennis Court Oath.
of "Our Youth" for instance
were rapidly
is embodied
attendant
the
dismay
Divine
giving
and confusdramatizes
on this.
a re-
As in "How
Sepulcher...,"
are played
the
off against
emoeach
54
Polarities
: A Study
of John Ashbery 's "The Tennis
Court Oath"
Weknew
The dead horses. We were discovering
coffee,
Howit is to be drunk hot, with bare feet
In Canada.
Which
Since
And the immortal
music of Chopin
we had been discovering
we were fourteen
for several
years old.
months
And coffee
grounds,
And the wonder of hands, and the wonder of the day
When the child discovers
her first dead hand.30
(TCO,
Concepts
of youth
as might
happen
also
and death
in later
do not glide
Ashbery,
in "How Much Longer
cher..."
the
projections
protagonist's
grow
mas unnervingly
You will
but
Will
sense
of his
to
identity
and thwarted,
indistinct
:
out of each
are percussively
I Be Able
confused
never have that
in and
p.41)
here,
juxtaposed.
Inhabit
the
Divine
is radically
and his
other
sexual
As
Sepul-
unstable.
His
and family
trau-
young boy,
That boy with the monocle
Could have been your father
He is passing by. No, that other one,
Upstairs.
He is the one who wanted to see you.
He is dead.
Green and yellow handkerchiefs
cover him.
(TCO, p.41)
The poem's intensities
appropriately
synthesis.
and
by explicitly
The poet departs
frustrations
denying
exist
the possibility
side
by side,
and
of any kind
from his poem as if jumping
ship,
it ends
of ideal
leaving
its
Polarities
paradoxes
It's
: A Study of John Ashbery's
unresolved
true
and its divisions
we have not avoided
By weeding
"The Tennis Court Oath"
simply
balanced
:
our destiny
out the old people.
Our faces have filled
Down the cloud
with
ladder,
smoke.
but
We escape
the problem
has not been solved.
(TCO,
A similar
multiple
flates
sense
narrative
at least
her
essay
("And
of the
irreconcilable
of "They
kinds
murderer's
between
a key in his right
hand.
again
seems to be about
the conflict
craving
both
oblivion
return
and the
/ "Please,"
and contact
Ashbery
here con-
love
willingly.")
desire
out in
in postmodern
of a murder
romantic
in the
points
of story
he asked
between
occurs
As Perloff
the language
ash tray...")
holds
self
the
p. 42)
simultaneous
of discourse.
to action:
the poem oscillates
the
but
Dream Only of America."
two separate
"From image
poetry,"31
55
mystery
story
("He
The poem
and fear,
the anxious
:
They dream only of America
To be lost among the thirteen
"This
honey
million
pillars
of grass
:
is delicious
Though it burns the throat."
(TCO,
The abstract
fantasy
one wonders)
further
recessed
contrast
with
of escape of the first
is starkly
in speech
followed
by a wholly
marks, with
the vague wishfulness
two lines
the final
(who
p. 13)
are the "they"?
unrelated
line
of the opening
remark,
even
in italics
as well.
sentence,
this
second
In
56
Polarities
declaration
sexual
: A Study
seems to emanate
- but it is impossible
once compared
"It sets
way."32 In these
Court Oath's
up into
evolving
contemplates,
of attention
this
which,
on one level,
ed relationship
seen as an honest,
In "To Redoute,"
though
for example,
with
to the flux.
My first
In the
instead
the fixed
is a haunting
face
hanging-down
hair.
My second
is water
turns
juxtaposes
responds"
and
out to be. Various
of art
the reader
is in a more aband the extent
to this
no intermediate
to Redoute's
to
a sustain-
his poems, might
response
alternatives;
random
poems in
from entering
or with
and
work of art he
illusions,
or spectator,
the poet offers
a poem such as
and the
the world
satisfactory,
of shots.
a wide-ranging
paradoxes,
image, and on the other
The "oval shape
of The Tennis
example,
the poet
of the poet
hardly
:
mode of The Tennis
explores
of the reader
the notion
work of art, but
obsession
that
the book prevents
with
polarising
(1975)
actually
Court Oath intimate
way cut off from that
the
with
process
Ashbery
of film-making
the most disparate
between
fraught
this.
technique
the most obvious
exchange
however
The Tennis
the
caught
To take
methods
the dominant
in a Convex Mirror"
continually
solute
terms
than
- perhaps
and moves around in it, in an almost
together
poetic.
"Self-Portrait
field
experience
them further
works with
of splicing
of art are also
shifts
to connect
of imaginary
Court Oath consists
"The Tennis Court Oath"
from some concrete
the way his poetry
up a kind
cinematic
Ideas
of John Ashbery's
be
perception.
response
to
on the one hand
unconditional
flowers
surrender
in two steps :
:
I am a sieve.
(TCO,
p. 21)
Polarities : A Study of John Ashbery's "The Tennis Court Oath"
Projection
other
and
frustration,
in the successive
possession
manner of "Two Sonnets."
moment of art, its yearning
a sense of endlessness
poem expands
and complicates
lizing
Art is both
a single
and finite
moment, and yet its
The penalty
rebuke
of light
Over the heads
And back into
state
of this
kind
eternity
of completion
the
cough
of course
nature
look
about
of its juxtapositions
petal,"
typical
of its communicative
substance.
The last stanza
sical
from the idea
matter
not only
and distinctive
poem an awareness,
stripped
by crystal-
and clarity
of everyday
of the finishing
to, for instance,
"the cough of the finishing
the
re-
can
life :
who were there
Convex Mirror" but back
unmeditative
double
forever
night,
What is interesting
evocative
is followed
of this
petal.
(TCO,
Ideas
each
The rest of the
aspects
; it achieves
to the messiness
of those
the
The frozen,
and the indistinct.
paradoxical
continuous
seem an unwanted
confront
compound of memory and desire,
by its opposite,
sponse.
and dispossession,
57
Keats's
in a
"Ode on a Grecian
- the direct
is the
surreal
Ashbery
Urn."
dramatic,
yoking
also exhibits
of
in
of the book as a whole, of how art, when
can be seen as palpable
of the poem separates
of art as spiritual
must continue
:
to "Self-Portrait
"To Redoute"
for example.
faculties,
Once approved the magenta
But the bark island sees
Into the light :
It grieves for what it gives
forward
p. 21)
the idea
meaning :
physical
of art as phy-
58
Polarities
Tears
that
: A Study
streak
of John Ashbery's
the dusty
"The Tennis
Court Oath'
firmament.
(TCO,
Paint
as a physical
substance
("magenta")
powers of representation
("the
trasted
here,
flabby
Able
to Inhabit
to write
art,
as the "pale
the Divine
on mirrors.
by expressing
world,
seems to depend
the collage
the
writers
such
Hejinian,
ending,
the palpable
opening
band
as Ron Silliman,
Andrews,
but
honey
Clark
as radically
in Silliman's
the base of dwarf
with
that
the
the picture
debt
Coolidge,
Charles
fertile
experiments
Ron Silliman
The Tennis
in
further,
Lyn
that
is surely
helped
thinking
of
Court Oath as a semiof L=A=
Tree?3 and in the long poem
phonetically
over the report
causing
darkness"
bunny
Bernstein,
to his anthology
Station"
cypress."34
gratified
hand, by
Atocha
"the arctic
most fully
are seen, on the other
the
version
that
by many
In the American
the
of "Leaving
blabbed
ability
of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets,
when he lists
acknowledges
line
their
I Be
off as aberrations
for his movement in the introduction
he
Will
of relationship
in art is obviously
and thriving
N=G=U=A=G=Ewriting,
ABC
are con-
its suggestion
awareness
have been written
poems in particular
nal text
with
some kind
open up a whole new range of poetics.
these
with
with
so much canvas and pigment.
critics,
Bruce
the light")
are contrasted
allows
most purposeful
enormous
as endowed
of "How Much Longer
on the simultaneous
poems, which
of Ashbery's
hands"
sees / Into
Sepulcher..."
our loss,
need to stress
island
The poem's lyrical
can also be seen as just
This
bark
and paint
p. 21)
hopped
: Ashbery's
(TCO,
rewriting
the
"The
arctic
p. 33)
over the retort,
becomes
moss at
Polarities
: A Study of John Ashbery's
The poems can also of course
forms ; to the
drip-painting
ments of such
be related
of Jackson
so foregrounded
enges," "The Ascetic
to innovations
Pollock,
as John Cage, or Berio,
words as entities,
"The Tennis Court Oath"
or Webern.35
is present
to some extent
work as well,
clearly
and ambitions
general.
the
It can also,
whomAshbery
is interested.
J'ai Ecrit Certains
line
of poetry
sounds.
techniques
though,
for instance,
tied
with
different
story
the
describes
coloured
Genese - a typical
"Les lettres
words
to write
pal theme of his oratorio
but by changing
kind
"sept
a tale
using
how Handel
ribbons
all the
letter
du blanc
similar
du vin de
Vesper."31
He
elements.
In
given
used seven bunches
to compose, on a banister,
alter
the
sur le vieux
on the old billiard
becomes pillard.
ed as substance,
in
of holly
the princi-
Vesper. His Textes de Grande Jeunesse ou Textes-
a single
of Ashbery's
with
rempli
houx rampe lit
pun - return to the sentence
in chalk
of exploration
art in
in Comment
of words
The story
with
meaning
fascination
with
of the narrative
his use of the
they
billard"
begins
table
cushion).
In the final
itself
sets
explaining
Roussel
possibilities
physical
which
shape
began,
of all the words inside
about
white
man stranded
in darkest
Africa sends letters
pigeon about an old plunderer
who holds him captive.38
Part
terms, it
writers
describes
"Un vase tout
set himself
ence billard
to earlier
Hugo's,
would then
letters
Roussel,
back
From a line of Victor
he derives
(the
be connected
a series
the
on
both in Some
of Postmodern
it into
case
focus
and, in broad
and deconstruct
this
experi-
de Mes Livres36 how he would take a common phrase or
l'esperance,"
it.
Ashbery's
art
in poems such as "Europe," "The Loz-
Sensualists,"
in with
in other
or to the musical
Trees and in much of his following
fits
59
"Parmi
Les Noirs"
senthow a
home by jungle
must derive
of language
from
this
when treat-
and sound of words and
60
Polarities
their
purely
accidental
ture seemingly
relationship
motivated
Gertrude
Stein39
self-generative
Meditation
: A Study of John Ashbery 's "The Tennis Court Oath"
is perhaps
the
other
only on the level
also
nature
with
developed
simplest
tuation,
and
Ashbery
wrote on its posthumous
ing light
on facets
in this,
vocabulary,
an oblique,
of language
especially
her masterpiece
using
to create
mainly
a seemingly
undisclosed
publication
Stanzas
endless
in
poem
syntax,
eccentric
punc-
story-line.
The
review
in 1957
of his own work, especially
the autonomous
in her poetry.
disjunct
a litera-
itself.
ways of suggesting
of language,
written
words
throws
in The Tennis
an interestCourt Oath :
There is certainly
plenty
of monotony in the 150 -page title poem which forms
the first half of this volume, but it is the fertile
kind, which generates
excitement as water monotonously
flowing
over a dam generates
electical
power.
These austere
"stanzas" are made up almost entirely
of colorless
connecting
words such as "where", "which", "these", "of", "not", "have", "about", and so on,
though
now and then Miss Stein throws in an orange, a lilac, or an Albert to
remind us that it really
is the world, our world, that she has been talking
about.
The result is like certain
monochrome de Kooning paintings
in which
isolated
strokes of color take on a deliciousness
they never could have had out
of context,
or a piece of music by Webern in which a single note on the celesta
suddenly
irrigates
a whole desert of dry, scratchy
sounds in the strings.40
Like
thwarts
text,
so much of Ashbery's
the
reader's
attempt
and so familiarize
seemingly
to find
its
patterns
random or merely
banally
utilitarian
argues,
dramatizes
phrases
poetry,
musical
Stanzas
for it some kind
and defuse
variation
and sentences,
not feelings
about
in Meditation
life,
continually
of explicatory
con-
its uniqueness.
and repetition
Stanzas
of the most
in Meditation,
but the feel
of life
By its
itself
Ashbery
:
Polarities
: A Study of John Ashbery 's "The Tennis Court Oath "
61
As we get deeper into the poem, it seems not so much as if we were reading as
living
a rather long period of our lives with a houseful
of people.
Like people,
Miss Stein's
lines are comforting
or annoying or brilliant
or tedious.
Like
people, they sometimes
make no sense and sometimes make perfect sense ; or
they stop short in the middle of a sentence and wander away, leaving
us alone
for awhile in the physical
world, that collection
of thoughts,
flowers, weather,
and proper names. And, just as with people,
there is no real escape from
them: one feels that
encounter the Stanzas
if one were to close the book
in life, under another guise...
one would
shortly
re-
Stanzas in Meditation
gives one the feeling
of time passing, of things
happening, of a "plot", though it would be difficult
to say precisely
what is going on.
Sometimes the story has the logic of a dream...
[He quotes from the poem]
while at other times it becomes startlingly
clear for a moment, as though a
change in the wind had suddenly
enabled
us to hear a conversation
that was
taking
place some distance
away...
[He quotes from the poem].
But it is
usually
not events which interest
Miss Stein, rather it is their "way of happening", and the story of Stanzas in Meditation
is a general,
all-purpose
model
which each reader can adapt to fit his own set of particulars.
The poem is a
hymn to possibility
; a celebration
of the fact that the world exists, that things
can happen.41
As this
of the
last
paragraph
all-signifying,
grasp
of her material
tends
to be. This
more inclusive
beginning,
Stanzas
all-controlling
the poem also dismantles
self.
is as fragmentary
seeming
openness.
out of the author's
can relate
makes clear,
Ashbery
biography,
though,
of presenting
it offers
in Meditation
and end42 is also
of life
is really
a single
an "all-purpose
to on his or her own terms. The organic
middle,
suggests
that
Stein's
and random as one's grasp of life
incompleteness,
Instead
the notion
undermined
as a process
as infinitely
a means to a
narrative
wrought
model" the reader
poem's ideal
by Stein's
varied
form of a
conception
as it is incon-
in
62
Polarities
elusive.
In Ashbery's
only
possible
: A Study of John Ashbery's
stance
and Stein's
towards
"The Tennis Court Oath"
all-over
experience
aesthetic,
in medias
res is the
:
Both Stanzas in Meditation
and The Golden Bowl are ambitious
attempts
to
transmit
a completely
new picture of reality,
of that real reality
of the poet
which Antonin Artaud called "une reality dangereuse et typique".
If these works
are highly
complex and, for some, unreadable,
it is not only because of the
complicatedness
of life, the subject,
but also because they actually
imitate
its
rhythm,
its way of happening,
in an attempt
to draw our attention
to another
aspect
of its true nature.
Just as life is constantly
being altered
by each
breath one draws, just as each second of life seems to alter the whole of what
has gone before, so the endless process of elaboration
which gives the work of
these two writers a texture of bewildering
luxuriance
- that of a tropical
rainforest of ideas - seems to obey some rhythmic
impulse at the heart of all happening.43
The most disjunctive
experimental
to this
assays
"real
Like
through
variation
associations
than
Stein's
any mediated
Stanzas
tion
The effect
and a single
is similar
the hair"
throw
(TCO,
coherent
they
to that
of these
sentence
p. 16) ; "petals
impossible
discerned
both
lyrical
and surreal
armed with
a chain"
random
by Ashbery
poems full
flat
rhetorical
to quanti-
of a startling
syncopated
: "Autumn
(TCO,
in
; some phrases
can seem a tremendous
The
be closer
work predominantly
monochrome paintings
texture
would
words chosen through
of communication.
up images
that
by more conventional
infusing
music or de Kooning's
of our powers
"America"
poetry
in Meditation
and repetition,
emerge from the grey pulped
sonance,
an all-over
Court Oath can be seen as
of sound and sense with a significance
fy or explain.
Webern's
at achieving
reality"
strategies.
poems in The Tennis
re-
celebralines
of
brushes
p. 17) ; "Tears,
Polarities
hopeless
19)
: A Study of John Ashbery's
adoration,
; while
the
to a janitor
narrative
passions
poem's
and
/ the
one long
releases
fruit
line
him
"The Tennis Court Oath"
with
of carpentered
gathers
night"
up several
satisfying
63
fullness
(TCO,
earlier
into
p.
references
a fragment
of
:
stirred
in his sleep
the janitor
reaches
for the wrench with which
he'll
kill
the
intruder...
(TCO,
In a paradoxical
words
way, the
in these
bolic
range,
poems so concrete.
in the
representation
abstractness
manner
altogether
of the
They
praised
context
is what
are deprived
in Reverdy,
not only
but
almost
comes from "Leaving
bit
eign
like
Perloff
trying
nonsense.
the
and championed
to understand
language,
with
words or phrases,
Atocha
giving
Station,"
by Ron Silliman.
a newspaper
odd disconnected
Our attention
the
of sym-
of powers
of
corners
(TCO,
Marjorie
makes
:
old
eat
members with their chins
so high up
rats
relaxing the cruel discussion
suds
the painted
white
most aerial
garment crow
This
p. 17)
the poem dismissed
Reading
are
of being
by
the poem is a
to the radio
words combining
and speculations
us the feeling
or listen
p. 33)
in a for-
to form a garbled
engaged
by individual
in the middle
of things,
64
Polarities
having
with
: A Study
to struggle
no clear sense of the whole
poems like
extent
attraction
"America"
to which
diffuse
of "They
million
methods
of disguising
people's
words.
This
of titles
borrow
or share
their
The Double
Days),
debt:
titles
Picture
of Little
are derived
the
Again,"
existing
in
his career,
a Prospect
"Clepsydra,"
Land,"
Operator,"
"Gorboduc,"45
"Too Happy, Happy Tree."46
The title
Cullen
Bryant)
other
writers
The most extreme
cento
whose 52 lines
; these
example
include
of this
(the
are all quotations,
Donne,
Milton,
in
"Faust,"
"The
"Hard
and so on.
"As One Put Drunk
and Found
of the first
comes straight
"To a Waterfowl"47
are similarly
"Scheherazade,"
"Lost
uncollected
Court
"The Skaters,"
Grain,"
Independence.
Tennis
of Flowers,"
Gazing
of Happiness,"
most striking-
Four of his books
books
poems:
"The
is to use
in a Convex Mirror, House-
earlier
Boat,"
self
(The
within
Packet
from lines
of Ashbery's
of the
artworks
Holy
is simi-
among the
Another
poems in all of his
J.A.
undifferentiat-
"to be lost
people.
of
lie in the
The project
demands
used by other
"The Lonedale
Train, "The Pursuit
his
poem.
throughout
with
but
world
must
the flat,
p. 13).
the
and its Discontents,"
Times," "The Skaters,"
into
across
of the
(TCO,
"As You Came From the
Others
Station"
of America,"
happens
countless
"Rain," "Civilization
Task,"
self
surface
already
all-accommodating
Dream of Spring, Self-Portrait
il while
"The
poetic
and disparate,
constitute.
Atocha
or neutralizing
choice
boat
the
of grass"
ly in his
Oath,
might
the
Dream Only
pillars
immediate
to the neutral
autonomous
thirteen
other
they
or "Leaving
they
ing and seemingly
to that
"The Tennis Court Oath"
to make sense of the
Much of Ashbery's
lar
of John Ashbery's
and Lost
poem in Shadow
from the Declaration
of
tendency
is
title
mostly
Elizabeth
in Ashbery
comes from William
famous ones, from
Bishop,
Samuel
Polarities
Johnson,
: A Study of John Ashbery 's "The Tennis Court Oath "
Keats,
Marvell,
Waller,
Yeats,
another
uncollected
are culled
kind
is of course
Shakespeare,
typical
of Postmodern
Rivers's
Delaware,"51
Rauschenberg's
The Tennis
ments in this
Both
"Europe" contains
World
aster."53
lines
include
Burroughs's
cut
Crossing
the
of "Washington
erasure
Borges's
of a de Kooning
drawing.
most radical
experi-
long poem "Europe" and in the book's
use
pulp
fiction
for
and scissored
conflates
their
source
snippets
novel by William
"Idaho"
Bloom dismisses
It is certainly
tic inheritance
material.
Le Queux called
English
and
final
from an English
Beryl
American
of the
to which
ing"34
process
which
suggested,
"Europe" as a "long spiel"
Ashbery's
be seen, from whatever
Ashbery's
of
styles
into
ambiguity
between
around,
the
rejection
of the
and his succeeding
distance,
The poem is the fullest
later
a state
and "a fearful
most of his earlier
it may be that
neutralized
most sustained
to relate.
of "questioning,
from such experiments.
world
its
of
fiction.
Harold
sion
; all
in new contexts
examples
two of Ashbery's
long quotations
while
performance
of Don Quixote,^
repainting
War propaganda
Biplane?2
popular
chapters
contains
these
Wyatt,
"Hoboken,"48
or second-hand
famous
manner in the
poem "Idaho."
and Browning.
art. Obvious
subversive
Court Oath
Pope, Stevens,
Thesaurus.
of use of the pre-existing
Menard who recomposes
First
Tennyson,
Hardy,
from a Roget's
-ups,50 Larry
the
Arnold,
poem, is an even stranger
straight
This
Pierre
Eliot,
Shelley,
65
dismantling,
poetry
his
backed
later
work
Much of this
later
of potentiality,
promptings
and the poetry
that
suspended
of the
results
a certain
self
can often
in a kind
and
the
extendemolish-
away from, though,
work presents
Roman-
poems can
and, perhaps,
has gained
dis-
he has
"depth"
a poetic
self
of receptive
claims
of the
be seen as a record of
66
Polarities
the dialogue
: A Study of John Ashbery's "The Tennis Court Oath"
between
annihilated
the two.
by the
actually
The poet
contingencies
that
form its substance.
of "Europe,"
not only
Bloom upbraids
overwhelm
of reality."55
But
"pressure
Ashbery
in resisting
this
pressure
absence
of all
if it is surrendered
context
heroism.
The episode
concludes
is in fact,
in the original,
His
a Yorkshire
searchlight
is to
Ashbery
has
not
arranged
the prose
under
guide
German
into
After
so much incoherence,
final
passage
sibility
of communication
Oath's
into
consistently
wholly
Communication
with
The poem is at once autistic,
side
world.
sciousness
It is Ashbery's
that
dominates
grammatical
omitted
while
undercut
by the
Ashbery
is either
strip.
some, and
word, "breath."
sentences
clarity.
is typical
dualities,
the poet
"Europe"
landing
of this
The morse
to the excitement
and impos-
of The Tennis
the
notion
fact
at his
that
most
completely
to the arbitrary
terminal
dramatization
the book as a whole.
defence
of the
contingencies
Court
of poetry
the
lines
resolutely
poet's
as
are
in-
blocked,
out to have been in someone else's
an impenetrable
surrendered
a secret
he has
equally
reveals
when it seems to occur, turns
sism, and wholly
to
the poem's final
in a way that
"Europe"
which
of
of Mr Aylesworth.
an extraordinary
the sky gesture
is conclusively
borrowed.
effable.
with
unreconciled
self-expression
with
on a kind
by a German spy who has
planes
the sustained
- or rather
takes
the pseudonym
and added
seem suffused
flashed
searchlight
a word, though
lines,
context
prose
part of a plot
village
changed
signals
of the
as he is in finding
In this
- Le Queux's ridiculous
desperate
infiltrated
to.
but
might
the
happens
his text
as Stevens
sufficiently
out what
seems
Ashbery
have done, for not resisting
is not as interested
in contrast,
or,
words.
solip-
of the out-
of the schismatic
con-
Polarities
: A Study of John Ashbery 's "The Tennis Court Oath"
One of the most impoverishing
poems as a whole,
ways of keeping
sections
is their
things
is a good
connection.
separate
example
and have
of this56
imposing
form and content
or "The Painter"
(ST,
Court Oath
less mediated
this
- rather
They
explore
of "Europe"
than
with
units
their
in poems like
pp.54-55).
strain
ideal
quizzical
"A Pastoral"
beyond
Again,
that
lead
of the mind's
is establish-
(ST, pp. 72 - 73)
poetics
such rhetorical
a sentence
or
or pantoum
relationship
The more absolutist
to get
111
surroundings.
upon the free play
almost
into
means of relation
linguistic
relationship
patterns
sense of reality.
clarifies
collage
metaphorical.
of self-sufficient
and an interesting,
ed between
of the
and of the
used odd forms such as the sestina
as ways of artificially
associations,
of "Europe,"
- the fragmentation
no apparent
Some Trees ostentatiously
Roussel
rejection
The poems are full
nowhere
Tennis
aspects
67
of The
refractions
from Ashbery's
to a
essay on
:
In Nouvelles Impressions
the unconscious
seems to have broken through
the
myths in which Roussel had carefully
encased it : it is no longer the imaginary
world but the real one, and it is exploding
around us like a fireworks
factory,
in one last dazzling
orgy of light and sound.57
Even the book's
the exorcism
er," "Faust"
between
explores
but
ideas
where
the theatrical
the indeterminate
result
poem, the sestina
of its own mythical
them,
martyrdom,
most formal
of the form's
of life
the
world
and everyday,
logic.
and formal
"Faust,"
elements.
is actually
Like
and art and the ever-shifting
painter
achieves
of "Faust"
and this
The theatre
some kind
is shown fading
about
"The Paintboundaries
of artistic
greyly
into
is made to seem an inevitable
and the real
world
collapse
into
68
Polarities
each other,
"a bare
sures
and the opera
sunlit
of its
beyond
: A Study of John Ashbery's
stage."
disintegrates
"The Tennis Court Oath "
back
into
its most basic
The poem ends up contrasting
own formal
requirements
with
its
the
sense
In the wings
Moves forward,
the tenor
of life
Faust
would
kiss,
no longer
and Faust
time.
The opera
need its phantom.
stage
the hungers
could
begin.
(TCO,
The only poem Bloom exempts
World,"
and it too,
beneath
its own metaphors
situations
is the
with
project
book's
poems.
satisfactorily
withdrawal
best
part
into
impasse
agree
world
that
and sometimes
Ashbery
but metaphors,
they
of
to probe
archetypal
Bloom that
by no means its only
"A
inter-
from its success
in sug-
by "Europe"
and the
dramatized
a self
the
with
out of the same basic
But whereas
in "A Last World"
the poem into nothing
the
aesthetics
way, attempts
of its power derives
contact,
in between.
I would
poem, though
It emerges
or universal
but nothing
on the volume, "A
the aim of uncovering
evolved.
ways out of the poetic
collage
from his strictures
in a more complex
they
one, and add that
gesting
taphors,
though
from which
World"
pp.47-
can also be read in terms of the self-abolishing
"Faust,"
other
continuing
young, reappearing
for the last
no longer
On the bare, sunlit
esting
clo-
hungers
convulsive
And reappearing
Last
insistent
its scope :
For the heroine's
Last
property,
dilemma:
craves
both
respond
goes to the opposite
either
how to
solipsistic
at the same time,
by refusing
all me-
extreme,
turning
the more mixed the better.
Polarities
: A Study of John Ashbery 's "The Tennis Court Oath"
The poem's
an absurdly
rian
apocalyptic
impossible
congruence
shifting
title
distance
between
syntax
is apt.
and lost
from
The
the
poet
Romantic
names and things,
significance
presents
himself
dream
struggling
of a prelapsain a miasma
before
an angel
(TCO,
state
the
desperateness
of unconditional
of his
freedom.
situation
The impotence
nually
insisted
upon - "one can never change
burns
you the
harder
mulated
in the most
for
it"
in it at
of
:
The mark of things belongs to someone
But if that somebody was wise
Then the whole of things might be different
From what it was thought to be in the beginning,
the field glasses.
Paradoxically,
69
- but it means
extravagant
of terms
p. 56)
releases
the
of his
position
poet
metaphors
into
a
is conti-
the core of things,
his
bandaged
and light
can be for-
:
Still it is not too late for these things to die
Provided
that an anemone will grab them
heaven.
and rush them to the
wildest
(TCO, p. 56)
This
figurative
redundancy
marks - is in this
metaphorical
purely
literal
- which is to become one of Ashbery's
poem almost
world,
which
use of language
epically
oddly
contrasted
corresponds
in "Europe"
Then one could say nothing hear nothing
with
with
and "America"
trade-
an un fallen,
the
:
self-contained
pre-
70
Polarities
Of what
: A Study
the great
of John Ashbery's
time spoke
"The Tennis Court Oath"
to its divisors.
All borders
between men were closed.
Now all is different
without
having changed...
(TCO,
"A Last World"
autonomous,
They
can be read as an alternative
non-figurative
language
to reduce
all to a minimalist
attempt
World"
instead
ferent
expands
dimensions,
provising
its
metaphors,
randomness.
Ashbery
city
by
an archetypal
than
reverses
escapist
by the
single
cosmically
its tenses
rather
into
evoking
cherished
everything
confounding
to the
into
programming
yearning
prehistoric
ideal
collage
poems.
"A Last
a multiplicity
of dif-
its imagery,
scraps
im-
of language
for unmediated
world
of an
dimension.
and scrambling
their
p. 56)
in luridly
simpliprejudiced
terms:
Man is never without
Casting
woman, the neuter
up her equations,
For man never smiles
looks
sex
to her lord
for loving
kindness
at woman...
(TCO,
Our epic ideals
vealed
of origins,
as in fact nothing
"A Last
World"
the violently
also
oscillating
habit
the Divine
solutist
desire
ly into
its
humbler
of the literal
arbitrary
of metaphors.
achieves
of sorts
self
to reject
a solution
to the
of "How Much Longer Will
are here re-
dilemma
I Be Able
and so on. The poet's
the outside
or to be assimilated
world
phenomena
:
gives
way in this
of
to In-
," "Two Sonnets"
and infinite
sense of participation
of our situation,
but the most blatant
Sepulcher...
either
truth
p. 56)
ab-
utterpoem to a
Polarities
As it falls
Cries
: A Study
of John Ashbery
the house,
your treasure
along
to the
folded
other
into
men;
it like
the
mint
darkness
into
's "The Tennis Court Oath"
will
the sound
have
none of you, and
harks
back
of course
The main difference,
advance,
to which
own sense of reality.
Behind
ing," and part of the
there
In fact
their
steriously
trees
scene
himself
assume palpable
are generating
him.
Ashbery
career
-
their
"this
morn-
responsible
for
In "A Last World"
is responding,
and
the sole cause of the poem's existence.
like
the trees,
casually
present.
Similes
my-
:
twilight
in your
are assumed to have a life of
is only
existence
height
have you got there
overall
a particular
surround
to which
the poet himself
And from a tremendous
What
the
the metaphors,
own in which
of "Some Trees."
of Ashbery's
the metaphors
p. 57)
joy stems from his not feeling
which
to feel
here
wonder
"Some Trees" lies
specific
he ought
though,
poet's
with
is no anterior
by rights,
haphazard
and - in the context
is the extent
the "comeliness"
to the
you are
of haying...
(TCO,
This
71
falls
like
a stone
and hits
you...
hand?
Itisastone...
In this
fluid
confusion
remain
unobtrusively
seeking
to escape
tions
of the
indistinct
of the metaphorical
a part
wholly
into
are still
of things,
them
quite
(TCO,
p. 57)
and the physical
the
suspended
He wished to go far away from himself.
:
can
among them, neither
nor from them, though
strong
self
the
tempta-
72
Polarities
There
: A Study
were no baskets
without
In that
of John Ashbery's
in those
jovial
"The Tennis
pine-tree
forests,
Court Oath "
and the waves pushed
whitecaps
foam where he wished
to be.
(TCO,
"A Last World"
It imitates
the
is certainly
epic
investigations
"Sonnets
from China,"58
intensity
of the
quarter
quest
Tennis
though
it adds
poet of The Orators.
Court Oath,
except
"Faust,"
in a confrontation
Roland's
is nothing
4).
confront,
And
poems.
of a poem like
Auden's
type
of language
"we" takes
becoming
all of the other
and this
is again
is less coolly
death
but "a stupid
delight
which
other
clutching
in metaphor
here
wittily
poems in The Tennis
the spars
of the
other
furniture,
A wise thing,
but
things
which
of language
death
"Faust"
the poem concludes
p.
the "we"
that
cul-
impossible
machinery"
as
Oath
(TPL,
and defers
can only
p.
the
grimly
:
building
filled
with
modern
for us.
(TCO,
Like
(ST,
in The Heroes, which
spans
Court
is a new office
has no purpose
and
minotaur
of stage
than
undertaking
as oblique
piece
poems in The
behave"
detached
unambitious
of a ge-
more in the mode of
in some desperate
with
the mad
over the last
repesentative
in nearly
Dark Tower, or Theseus's
Ashbery's
abysses
earlier
of Some Trees to "see us as we truly
of "Two Scenes" ; it is engaged
Childe
to this
A prophetic
But the "we" of "A Last World"
minates
of Ashbery's
Causes
enterprise
in a way unimaginable
determination
9).
of First
of the poem, the poet's
neric
the
the most vatic
p. 56)
with
the exhaustion
p. 58)
of its own met-
Polarities
aphorical
being,
Fictions
: A Study of John Ashbery's "The Tennis Court Oath"
though
this
can embroider
very last,
but
the harder"
for trying
speculation
is consumed
A little
in suitably
our journey,
are unable
Everything
happens
to alter
indeed
final
will
necessities,
to make them do so.
is being
apocalyptic
language.
accompany
us to the
and "light
Even the
blown
up with
As we gallop
into
the flame.
most passionate
a letter
in its mouth,
which
is read
with
(TCO,
serenity
here a "radiance"
of late
weisheitspielerei."
the
diction
that
is "a revisionary
Stevens,"59
and compares
It is interesting
and lineation
to note,
pantomime
Appropriately
conclude
phantly
1.
2.
horse
for a book
in someone else's
in Ashbery's
both
so riven
language,
with
into
the poem with
"Lebens-
how un-Stevensian
the poetry
terms.
stock
dualities,
but its
p. 58)
of the dif-
own unique
develop
eagerness
completion
though,
are, how completely
what have come to seem Ashbery's
and the
you
away ;
trots
ficult
burns
in the moment :
horse
Bloom finds
73
The futile
Ashbery
its
best
is happening
longest
in
letter
properties.
poem may
poem ends up trium-
own.
The Tennis Court Oath, Middletown
: Wesleyan University
For example:
Mona Van Duyn inPoetry,
(Chicago),
100
Press, 1962.
(Summer 1962),
p.
393 : "If a state of continuous
exasperation,
a continuous
frustration
of expectation,
a continuous
titillation
of the imagination
are sufficient
response
to a series of thirty-one
poems then these have been successful.
But to be
satisfied
with such a response I must change my notion of poetry."
John
Simon in Hudson Review (Autumn
1962),
p. 458 : "In another
poem,
"Europe," which seems to be autobiographical,
section
ten reads, in its enti-
I
Polarities
rety,
: A Study
"He had mistaken
know better
(Spring
1962),
stakingly
sound...
dazzling
in
Partisan
the
again,
Review, 473
's "The Tennis
for garbage."
poet."
Samuel
"The publisher's
as conveyors
brilliance
from Ashbery
3.
his book
than the
p. 330:
chosen
of John Ashbery
I do not think
meaning,
not as representations
of
interplay
of
end
create
by their
clashing
and
strong
emotional
impact."
understand
(Spring
1962),
it is up to us to
Morse in Virginia
Quarterly
Review
blurb
says that these "words pain-
of precise
"I don't
Court Oath"
a structure
So be it.
But
to quote
wreckage."
p. 290.
4.Ibid.
5.
6.
Ibid.,p.291.
Marjorie
Perloff,
"Fragments
of a Buried
Life,"
Lehman,
Beyond Amazement,
p.78.
7.
Helen
reprinted
Vendler,
"Understanding
in Bloom,
Critical
Ashbery,"
Views,
(all
The New Yorker
page
references
(March
to this
16, 1981),
publication)
p.180.
8.
9.
Harold Bloom, "The Charity
of the Hard Moments," in his Figures of Capable
Imagination
(New York:
Seabury
Press, 1976)
pp. 169-209,
reprinted
in
Bloom, Critical
Views, (all page references
to this publication)
p. 53.
In his essay "The Lonesomeness of Words:
A Revaluation
Of The Tennis
Court Oath" (Lehman, Beyond Amazement, pp. 150 - 162) Moramarco argues
that "despite
all the innovations
and avant-garde
qualities
in The Tennis
Court Oath, many of the poems in the volume may be examined and responded to in a rather traditional
literary
fashion"
(p. 158).
He offers close
readings
of "A Life Drama" and "Our Youth," suggesting
that they should be
seen in the context
of Ashbery's
interest
in the attempts
of Raymond
Roussel to construct
"a reality
generated
solely by language
itself"
(p. 151).
In his chapter
on the volume in John Ashbery:
An Introduction
to the Poetry
(New York : Columbia
University
Press, 1979)
David
Shapiro
focuses on
Ashbery's
experiments
in collage.
The success of the poems, he maintains,
derives from Ashbery's
skillful
"distribution
of the elements
of discontinuity
so that they are just held in balance,
or framed, by the fewest necessary
cohesive
elements"
(p.61).
He discusses
many of the book's poems and
suggests
a diverse
range of contexts
that include
Jasper
Johns, Holderlin,
Arnold
Schoenberg,
and T.S. Eliot.
In conclusion
he argues that
"the
dramatic
immediacy
of the
collages
of The Tennis
Court Oath
is...
never
Polarities
: A Study of John Ashbery's
"The Tennis Court Oath"
75
equalled,
and it seems that its particular
disjunct
style had, for the author,
reached its limit"
(pp. 79-80).
In his essay "Investigating
The Tennis Court
Oath" in Verse, vol. 8, no. 1, Spring
1991,
pp. 61-71,
John Shoptaw
interprets
the book's disjunctions,
obliquities,
and general
fascination
with
codes and acts of detection
in more political
terms as a response to the
10.
ll.
12.
13.
14.
repressions
- and especially
the homophobia
- of the McCarthyite
fifties.
He
argues that Ashbery's
cutting
up of Le Queux's patriotic
platitudes
can be
seen as an act of subversion
directed
against
all repressive
ideologies,
but
particularly
against
the politics
incarnated
in the House of un-American
activities.
Osti, "The Craft of John Ashbery,"
p.94.
Further
negative
comments about
The Tennis Court Oath occur in Bloom / Losada "Craft Interview
with John
Ashbery,"
p. 16: "For instance,
the poem "Europe", the long poem in that
book, is one that's no longer very close to me. At the time I wrote it I was
baffled
as to what to do in poetry ; I wasn't satisfied
with the way my work
was going and I felt it was time to just clear my head by writing
whatever
came into it and that's very much the case with that poem; and I think
it
helped
me along but I don't value it as much as ones I've written
since."
"John Ashbery : An Interview
with John Murphy," Poetry Review, London
(Volume 75, No.2, August 1985) p.20.
Peter Stitt
"The Art of Poetry
XXXIII : John Ashbery,"
Paris Review, New
York, (Volume
25, No.90,
Winter 1983, pp.30-59),
reprinted
in Poets at
Work : The Paris Review Interviews edited
by George Plimpton,
introduction
by Donald Hall (New York : Penguin
Books, 1989, p.411.
All page references
to this
publication).
In his interview
with John Ash for PN Review,
Manchester,
("John
Ashbery
in conversation
with John Ash," Volume 12,
No.2, pp.31-34)
Ashbery
takes up this point again:
"I could have developed the earlier
style
further
and I've no idea why I didn't.
I probably
should have done" (p. 31).
Bloom, Critical
John Ashbery,
Pierre Reverdy],
Views, p. 53.
"Reverdy en Am6rique," Mercure de France, [Special
Issue
Paris, no. 344 (January/April
1962)
pp. 111 - 112. Reverdy
is an important
figure for the New York poets. Kenneth Koch mentions him
in "Fresh Air" as one of the great poets indubitably
"of our time" {Selected
Poems (New York, Vintage
Books, 1985),
p. 38).
Frank O'Hara concludes
his
:
6
Polarities
"A Step
(New
: A Study
Away From Them" (The
York : Alfred
almost
A. Knopf,
as a charm:
Reverdy."
Reverdy's
has
"L'Invasion,"
"Clair
pocket,
translated
Hiver,"
"Encore
and Edges by Philip
of sand
and schools
of herring
to suspect
that
("Tradition
and Talent,"
16.
The
is used
17.
Poems, p. 266.
Certainly
the image
he is in direct,
of the
sailors'
les mats,
Mallarme,
Selected
le chant
Poetry
20.
man, 1970)
pp. 500- 506.
See for instance
"Rain" : "Words
21.
Shapiro
"Do Ich
Ein
p. 65).
Knabe
Mitchell's",
in the
lines
The
Ashbery
each
considers
of which
begins
this
; seagulls,
on eternity,
Sept.
face
until
with
1966),
O'Hara,
it"
p. 14.
The Collected
of possible
of Mallarme's
ship-
poem :
drip
sur les naufrages
Hots...
des matelots
!
edited
by
Holderlin
by Miriam
Allott
from the wound..."
poem to which
(Friedrich
poem Roussel's
straightforwardly,
Mary
Ann Caws
p. 16.
poem can be seen as "parodied
War..."
sarcastically
communication
(TCO,
Eduard
is soon
(Shapiro,
relates
Morike,
It has
interrupted
: Long-
p.31).
directly
by Christopher
Press, 1972),
"masterpiece."
but
(London
Holderlin"
it most
Holderlin,
Poems translated
and with
an introduction
(Chicago
and London : The University
of Chicago
22.
Sans Fin,"
world
hot-line
and Prose,
Book, 1982)
Bloom, Critical
Views, p. 8.
John Keats, The Complete Poems, edited
John Ashbery,
poems
les orages
penche
18.
19.
the
the
giving
camaraderie
invitant
A New Directions
suggests
Ashbery
spot
windows
from the concluding
Mais, 6 mon coeur, entends
(New York:
of Reverdy's
Book Week, New York, (HI. 52,4
sans mats, sans mats, ni fertile
Stephane
Booth
he can't
are likewise
de ceux qu'un vent
Perdus,
in which
in "Poem Read at Joan
wreck seems to derive
Sont-ils
name
by Pierre
L'Amour," "Voyages
of Weathers
Et, peut-etre,
Reverdy's
Poems
pp. 74- 79.
is the grain
phrase
Allen,
edited
by Michael
Bendedikt
for translations
by Ashbery
of
In a review
we begin
it is
a number
notes : "Rare
dories,
by Donald
by invoking
my/
See The Poetry of Surrealism
Brown and Company, 1975)
and "Ce Souvenir,"
Court Oath "
Poems, edited
p. 257-258)
is in
himself
"The Tennis
Collected
1979)
"My heart
Ashbery
into English.
(Boston
: Little,
15.
of John Ashbery's
is
Selected
Middleton
p. 3).
four
cantos,
by an end-
Polarities
less
: A Study
stream
By the
of John Ashbery's
of subsidiary
middle
thoughts,
of the
"The Tennis Court Oath"
each enclosed
poem there
are as five
77
in a new pair of brackets.
pairs
of parentheses
in opera-
tion.
In his essay "Re-establishing
Raymond Roussel," Portfolio
and Artnews Annual, 6, (Autumn
1962)
reprinted
as "On Raymond Roussel" in How
I Wrote Certain Of My Books trans.
Trevor
1977,
all page references
to this publication)
of so many "bristling
which
23.
keeps
T. S. Eliot,
Shapiro
tional,
the
While
in the
calls
essay
these
In the
I lay
the
quoted
hay states
(London
: Faber
often
from "The Suspended
of Pennsylvania
his
p. 65).
explicitly
rejects
own poetry
ones - to Eliot's
Life"
1969),
most tradi-
JohnsAshbery,
Ashbery
aesthetic,
parodic
and Faber,
one of the
on Reverdy
of Eliot's
- though
of reality
(p. 54).
poems" (Shapiro,
above
implications
lines
impression
of a windmill"
poem "Prufrockian...
of Ashbery's
many references
instance,
is "a tumultuous
the sails
Poems and Plays
most Eliotic,
Symbolist
tains
at one like
The Complete
pp. 13-17.
certain
parentheses"
swiping
Wink field
(New York:
Sun,
Ashbery
notes that the result
yet
writings.
conFor
:
and Arkansas
down and slept
(TCO,
obviously
mock Eliot's
line in The Waste Land : "By the
sat down and wept" (Eliot,
The Complete Poems, p. 67).
24.
Auden,
25.
Lehman, Beyond Amazement, p. 157.
Collected
26.
Bloom, Critical
p. 37)
waters
of Leman I
Poems, p. 131.
Views, p. 50.
Moramarco
in turn
argues that
Bloom's
distaste
for the volume derives
from the fact that "it does not neatly fit into his reductionist
scheme of "revisionary
ratios" " (Lehman, Beyond Amazement, p.
151).
27.
In his interview
with
Osti
Ashbery
remarks
: "I feel
that
in The Tennis Court
Oath what I was probably
doing at the time, was taking poetry apart to try
to understand
how it works" (Osti, "The Craft of John Ashbery,"
p. 95).
He
describes
tioning,
28.
the
poetic
dismantling,
In interview
concrete
are intelligible.
period
in which
and, perhaps,
Ashbery
has suggested
way, something
And this
that
the
book
demolishing"
that
is unintelligible
was the dilemma
the
was written
as one of "ques-
(Ibid.).
volume
"presents,
as well
of understanding
in a sort
as some things
that
of
that
I was actu-
78
Polarities
: A Study
of John Ashbery's
ally trying
to duplicate
or, rather,
of John Ashbery," p. 95).
"The Tennis Court Oath"
reproduce
29.
Lehman, Beyond Amazement, pp. 158 - 162.
30.
Just
as the
"shaking"
Sepulcher..."
(TCO,
in a handshake,
with
31.
mortality
tradition
(Cambridge
than
his
Culler
p. 26)
might
"dead
be seen either
hand" might
suffering
: Cambridge
analyses
Structuralist
the
Poetics
discussion
"Investigating
of this
The Tennis
"The Craft
the Divine
as trembling
or as engaged
as a confrontation
from pins-and-needles.
Studies
University
1985)
of different
1975),
poem as charting
of the Pound
pp. 161 - 163.
together
: Routledge,
Court Oath,"
in the poetry
Press,
poem's braiding
(London
(Osti,
I Inhabit
be seen either
The Dance of the Intellect:
also
Shoptaw's
of "How Much Longer Shall
or as merely
Perloff,
poems"
hands
so this
Marjorie
in the
p. 169.
an explicitly
Jona-
genres
See also
gay
in
John
romance in
Verse, vol. 8, no. 1, Spring
1991,
pp.
65-67.
32.
Osti,
33.
In the American
at
"The Craft
Orono,
of John
1986),
Andrews
"The
Influence
Stimulus,"
34.
by
Ron Silliman,
"I like
1991,
of Maine
Perception
Press,
interest
He singles
(ibid.,
1983),
Court
Bernstein's
of
Ambiguous
an
pp. 73 - 77).
I've
Coolidge
Ashbery
of the L=A=N
with
though
out Clark
and
Tennis
unpaginated.
interview
Poets
Bruce
Charles
in the achievements
In his PNReview
poet
of clarity
The
See also
Upon
some of the Language
movement is all about."
"Investigating
p.61).
: Tuumba
bemused
: University
as "a critique
hommage to Ashbery
ABC (Berkeley
=G=U=A=G=E
poets.
marks:
in
Patterns
poetic
expressed
Court Oath
Shoptaw
of Kinship
(Orono
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
no. 1, Spring
an oblique
has himself
The
The Tennis
(quoted
Verse, vol.8,
p. 87.
by Ron Silliman,
p. XVL
has praised
transparency"
Oath,"
Ashbery,"
Tree edited
John
Ash he re-
no idea
what their
as "quite
a wonderful
poet who has gone farther
than I would care to in a direction
that attracts
me very much, and I'm sort of grateful
to him for having done so" ("John
Ashbery
35.
in Conversation
with
In his PN Review interview
to the experiments
Musicale
time.
me...
concerts
John
he talks
Ash," p. 31).
of the
of The Tennis Court
in Paris
regularly
hearing
the
I remember
I was living
importance
Oath : "I used
and
Webern
two cantatas
in a foreign
country
which
trying
of Webern
and Berio
to go to the
was often
particularly
to rethink
Domaine
played
at that
stimulated
my attitude
Polarities
: A Study of John Ashbery 's "The Tennis Court Oath"
79
towards my language, and by isolating
words and phrases and looking
for
the kind of timbre you find in Webern's very sparse works I felt I could do
something
interesting...
I remember also being impressed
by Berio's
Hommageto Joyce.
I rather
liked the kind of smear effect he did on the
poems of Joyce and in my own humble way I was trying to do something
like that in those problematic
poems" ("John Ashbery in conversation
with
John Ash," p.32).
The music of John Cage had made an impact on Ashbery
several years previous to this.
In his introduction
to The Collected
Frank O'Hara he records : "We were both tremendously
impressed
Poems of
by David
Tudor's performance at a concert on New Year's Day 1952 of John Cage's
"Music of Changes," a piano work lasting
over an hour and consisting,
as I
recall,
entirely
of isolated,
autonomous tone-clusters
struck seemingly
at
random all over the keyboard.
It was aleatory
music, written
by throwing
coins in a method adapted
from the / Ching.
The actual mechanics of the
method escaped me then as it does now; what mattered
was that chance
elements could combine to produce so beautiful
and cogent a work. It was a
further,
perhaps for us ultimate
proof not so much of "Anything
goes" but
"Anything
can come out" (Introduction
to The Collected
Poems of Frank
O'Hara,
36.
p. IX).
Commentj'ai
ecrit certains
de mes livres,
(Paris
: Librairie
Alphonse
Lemerre,
1935).
37.
Ibid.,p.9.
38.
Ibid.,
39.
Gertrude
40.
U=A=G=E poetry in his introduction
to In the American Tree, p. XVJ.
John Ashbery,
"The Impossible,"
Poetry, (Chicago)
vol.90,
no.4 (July
1957)
pp. 225-236.
(Review
of 1971
41.
Ibid.,
42.
Stein's
Stein
of Gertrude
"Gertrude
Stein's
Stein,"
poem blandly
Haven : Yale
43.
Ashbery,
44.
The paintings
volume.)
method
of composition
seen by Ron Silliman
Stanzas
(RS,
is explained
as a precursor
in Meditation)
pp. 106-
p. 250.
on pp. 4-5.
of L=A=N=G=
See also
his essay
111).
pp.250-251.
(New
tively.
The
is also
ends : "These
University
"The Impossible,"
(Kitaj's
are by David,
Houseboat
stanzas
Press,
1956)
are done"
(Stanzas
in Meditation,
p. 151).
p. 251.
de Chirico,
Days
was
Parmigianino,
painted
and R. B. Kitaj
specifically
for
respecAshbery's
80
Polarities
45.
The
: A Study
allusions
Thomas,
are
to
Freud,
Korsakov,
of John Ashbery's
works
Charles
Dickens,
by,
"The Tennis
respectively:
Cotton,
Marvell,
Cowper,
Meyerbeer,
Court Oath"
Sir
D. W. Griffith,
Goethe,
Walter
Edward
Raleigh,
Thomas
Norton
Rimskyand Thomas
Sackville.
46.
These
titles
Emily
Dickinson's
Coker,"
are
drawn
from,
"Because
and Keats's
respectively
I could
"In drear-nighted
47.
Locus Solus
48.
Semi-Colon,
New York, 1.3 (1955?),
49.
Jorge
Borges,
50.
[Special
Luis
Issue:
by Donald
1970),
pp.62-71.
Three
of Burroughs's
published
51.
Museum of Modern
52.
William
2,
pp.
- cut-ups
II, pp. 148-
of to-day
Bloom,
54.
Osti,
55.
Wallace
(London
Critical
"The
Craft
(Summer
of the
E. Irby
1961),
pp. 7-9.
Quixote,"
in Labyrinths
(Harmondsworth
of Rimbaud's
: Penguin,
Illuminations
- were
151.
Art, New York, 1953.
Le Queux, Beryl of the Biplane
53.
"East
1-2.
Author
and James
collages
in Locus Solus
Death,"
," T. S. Eliot's
December."
Menard,
A. Yates
"Tom May's
for Death...
Collaborations],
"Pierre
edited
: Marvell's
not stop
: C. Arthur
: Being
Pearson,
the Romance of an Air-woman
1917).
Views, p. 51.
of John
Stevens,
Ashbery,"
The Necessary
p. 95.
Angel
(London
: Faber
and Faber,
1960)
p.
22.
56.
In
his
aiming
under
interview
with
at making
a series
sons are ahead
of John
Ashbery,")
57.
"On Raymond
58.
field,p.55.
Auden, Collected
59.
Bloom,
Critical
Ashbery
explains
of splintered
of numbers.
how many are still
you, for instance,
Osti
a lot
to come.
It is rather
This
kind
that
purpose
and
discouraging
I wanted
in this:
collecting
to look
of discouragement
when you open a foreign
- is one thing
his
fragments
"I was
them
all
ahead
and see
- which
affects
grammar and see how many lesto get
into
it"
(Osti,
"The Craft
p.94.
Roussel,"
in How I Wrote
Poems, pp. 149- 157.
Views, p. 54.
Certain
of My Books, trans.
Wink-