David Shapiro's John Ashbery:
to the Poetry
Introduction
Reviewed by Lynn Keller
An
For more than a decade
it has been fashionable
for critics and re
to mention
of John Ashbery
viewers
the importance
when gener
recent
about
American
Yet
poetry.
alizing
despite Ashbery's
widely
little in-depth elucidation
of this difficult
significance,
proclaimed
In the late '60s
poet's works has been published until quite recently.
was more often referred to than
and early '70s it seemed Ashbery
read. Now David
read Ashbery,
has
Shapiro, who has certainly
some
the
first
of
his
work.
produced
book-length
study
Despite
book provides
valuable
illumi
significant
shortcomings,
Shapiro's
nation of the philosophy
obscurities
the
intentional
of
determining
poetry.
Ashbery's
the epistemological
and thematic
Shapiro clarifies
significance
of Ashbery's
of
concealments."
He
that
argues convincingly
"style
are
works
fractured
the
because
believes
"truth
it
Ashbery's
poet
self has shattered
into something
relative and nomadic."
Shapiro
demonstrates
that Ashbery's
reflect his perception
of
disjunctions
and that his experiments
contemporary
"ontological
uncertainty"
are a response
with contingency
to the breakdown
of the old order of
in a
"confidence
causality.
respect Ashbery's
Shapiro's
analyses
new threshold for incoherence
and randomness"
and his tolerance
for ambiguity. This critic understands
well that
. . . the
carnivorous
Way of these lines is to devour their own nature, leaving
but a bitter impression of absence, which as we know
Nothing
involves presence,
but still.
Nevertheless
these are fundamental
absences,
struggling to
get up and be off themselves
(Rivers and Mountains,
p. 30)
With
considerable
intellectual
unravels
dexterity,
Shapiro
balanced paradoxes,
and
Ashbery's
multiple meanings,
precariously
subtle tonal shifts. Recognizing
the poet's estrangement
from tradi
tional coherencies
and simple mimesis,
Shapiro points us toward the
John Ashbery:
versity Press,
An
Introduction
to the Poetry,
by David
Shapiro.
Columbia
1979. $10.95.
137
Uni
new
questions
that
are
appropriate
to Ashbery's
experimental
forms.
The book's most valuable chapter is a slightly modified
version
of an article which
in
Field
(Fall, 1971), now
originally
appeared
of Meaninglessness."
Here Shapiro outlines
entitled "The Meaning
as Roussel,
debts to such writers, painters, and musicians
Ashbery's
and
de
Stevens, Whitman,
Busoni,
Auden, Reverdy,
Chirico, Cage,
and locates the affinities between Ashbery's
poetry and surrealism,
The author draws upon
and psychoanalysis.
expressionism,
1964
he
with
conducted
between
interviews
Ashbery
unpublished
and 1972.
In this first chapter, the connections
Shapiro identifies between
are
and
other
and
artists
thinkers
apt; they place the poet's
Ashbery
work in the larger context of contemporary
intellectual and aesthetic
on explain
trends. In later chapters,
insistence
however,
Shapiro's
into pre
and
declines
comparison
ing Ashbery
through analogy
on
His
reliance
and mannered
adjectives
sumptious
name-dropping.
abstract
as
such
"Wittgensteinian,"
"Zeno-esque,"
"Morgensternesque,"
to figures
and his passing references
"Daumier-like,"
"Lacanian,"
as
snob
and
Adorno
such
Yakubinski,
Mukarovsky,
Shklovsky,
with
far
continental
greater acquaintance
writing and
bishly demand
reader
American
art
than the moderately
sophisticated
avant-garde
are
not
allusions
to
Even when Shapiro's
is likely
possess.
particu
as to submerge
so dense
they are sometimes
larly esoteric,
Ashbery's
identity. The reader loses sight of Ashbery when asked to
and
to Gertrude
Rilke,
Stein, F. R. Leavis,
comparisons
to Rimbaud,
and then references
within a single paragraph,
and Dante
is the next (p. 144). More often than not, Sha
O'Hara,
use
obscures
rather than clarifies the texts at
of
comparisons
piro's
follow
Luther
hand.
prose tends toward pretentious
grandios
Shapiro's
an
to
audi
erudite
himself
exclusively
addressing
ity. Apparently
and
his ideas in academic
ence, he smothers
ponderous
jargon
one cannot help
academic
syntax. If I may risk an allusion myself,
use a long
sound advice: "Never
he had recalled Orwell's
wishing
word where a short one will do" and "never use a foreign phrase
... or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equiv
In general,
us with
like the following:
sentences
alent."
Shapiro bombards
and
"The poet has dropped connectives,
syntax itself, not
copulas,
as in E. E. Cummings
to produce an ecstatic allegro, but to empha
de tous les sens of a colossal Ennui"
size the d?r?glement
(p. 72).
to wade through this stylistic mire,
For those with the patience
traces the
theory which accurately
Shapiro offers a developmental
career.
of
four
examines
book
The
of
Ashbery's
Ashbery's
shape
138
Trees (1956), The Tennis Court Oath (1962), Rivers
volumes?Some
and Mountains
(1967), and Three Poems
(1972). Shapiro highlights
and phantas
the preponderance
of dream
"escapism
imagery,
to
revitalize
old
in
forms. In The
Ashbery's
early attempts
magoria"
is seen turning away from the world of
Tennis Court Oath Ashbery
to the bleaker realm of daylight,
Now
old forms?associated
metropolis.
dream
business,
with
and the
machines,
and
order,
stasis,
used only mockingly,
and collage techniques
security?are
empha
size the "drab tones of cheap literature and newspaperese."
Be
cause Shapiro finds that "it is to parody most that Ashbery
turns in
his later works,
if only to annihilate by its total use the very idea of
on the parodie aspects of Rivers and
parody"
(p. 79), he focused
an
to an almost
entire
Mountains,
devoting
chapter
line-by-line
In his analysis
long poem, "The Skaters."
reading ofthat volume's
as
of Three Poems,
in a mature
"involved
Shapiro regards Ashbery
out
form
of
fertile
scheme of somehow
formlessness"
(p.
evolving
his principle of principlelessness
within a nos
134) as he "couches
talgia for principles
unique to his late work"
(p. 133).
in The Tennis Court
readings are those of the poems
uncovers
content
in even the most
Shapiro
comprehensible
of
these
associational
the painstaking
poems. However,
fragmented
movement
to "The Skaters"
of Shapiro's
and Three
approach
Poems
results too often in a distortion
tone
of the texts. The poet's
and language
shift so rapidly that extensive
examination
of each
one has assimilating
the experience
falsifies
the whole
fragment
The
best
Oath.
and
prose and his long-lined verse flow elegantly
Ashbery's
In
unified
voice.
smoothly,
by a recognizable,
gently humorous
the
detailed
of
issues
in
raised
the
Shapiro's
explications
ontological
poem.
poems,
we
sometimes
lose
a sense
of
the
coherence,
the movement,
and the emotional
tenor of these works. Moreover,
exces
Shapiro's
on parody makes Ashbery
more
sive emphasis
appear
cynical and
is.
than
he
Often
the
elements
in
savage
really
parodie
Ashbery's
serve
him against charges of sentimentalism,
work, while protecting
as genuine expressions
of his feelings. Shapiro's
not
do
readings
give
to the sincerity beneath
the poet's apparent mock
adequate weight
ery.
The most
serious shortcoming
book derives from
of Shapiro's
his selection of texts. The main body of the book contains no refer
ences to works more recent than 1972, and The Double Dream
of
In his "Pro
Spring (1970) is mentioned
only a few times in passing.
the title poem o? Self-Portrait
in a
legomenon"
Shapiro discusses
no
Convex Mirror
but
are
other
in
that
volume
(1975),
poems
and Houseboat
one
sen
in
mentioned,
(1977) appears
Days
only
tence. Attempting
to justify his odd selection,
Shapiro states, "My
139
or problematic
is on the neglected
concentration
texts that I find
most
fruitful and difficult"
But
is
less
32).
(p.
"Fragment"
why
in its difficulty
than the poems of The Tennis Court Oath?
"fruitful"
more recent
Is "The Skaters"
than Ashbery's
really more neglected
works?
his omission
of Double
Dream
with
the
Shapiro defends
claim
that
the
volume
"has
outrageous
gained already perhaps an
can accurately
statement
hermeneutics"
If
that
be
adequate
(p. 32).
to
of
to
it
is
any
works,
"Self-Portrait,"
applied
Ashbery's
yet
for Shapiro's
Shapiro does examine that poem. The real explanation
I suspect,
is that he did not wish to revise extensively
the
choices,
on Ashbery
at Columbia
doctoral dissertation
that he completed
in
1973. Rather than writing new chapters on recent works,
he added a
in an effort to bring his study up to date. That
"Prolegomenon"
effort is less than successful;
the book fails to convey a representa
tive image of Ashbery's
work.
to continual
aesthetic
creed involves a commitment
Ashbery's
"In
has
he
has
art,"
remarked,
got to be for
"any change
change:
the better,
since it shows that the artist hasn't yet given in to the
to stand still and that his constantly
ever-present
temptation
is
still
menaced
each of his
vitality
emitting signals." Consequently,
volumes places new and different demands on his readers. Someone
to Ashbery's
introduction
poetry might mistak
reading Shapiro's
to
the
latest
works
be
enly expect
poet's
predominantly
parodie.
recent volumes, whose
role in Ashbery's
Parody plays a diminishing
the clich?ed and the tradi
inclusive poems easily assimilate
broadly
tional. Increasingly
of remaining attached
focused on the challenge
to non
to an ever-fleeting
turns more and more
present, Ashbery
to be found in banal and ordi
of the consolations
parodic portrayals
to the dullness
His mature
of this
accommodation
nary moments.
of the refuse of the past as an essential part of
world, his acceptance
to like it" cannot
the present, and his earnest insistence on "learning
be adequately
understood
by examining only the works Shapiro dis
cusses.
study, by virtue of its "Pro
dictated by the Columbia
(presumably
to be more
Press series of which
it is a part), pretends
University
the poems he has
than it is. For Shapiro discusses
comprehensive
and sensitive
chosen with penetrating
By
appreciation.
intelligence
and
tirade against systematics"
"relentless
illuminating Ashbery's
and certainty,
his parody of traditional
ideas of static understanding
this critic skillfully defends Ashbery
against charges that his poetry
It is unfortunate
legomenon"
merely
represents
140
that Shapiro's
and of its title
chaos.