John Ashbery is widely regarded as America's greatest living poet: his collected earlier work is currently published in a Library of America edition, an honor that has been accorded to no other American poet of his generation. Ashbery's career spans generations and centuries: his first book was published when selected by W.H. Auden for a literary prize in 1956, but in 2007 he accepted the honor of being Poet Laureate of MTV. This might give some sense of the breadth of Ashbery's achievement: something in it could appeal to the intellectually-demanding cantankerous English formalism of Auden and also to the "here we are now, entertain us" mindset of the MTV generation. The critic Harold Bloom has noted that Ashbery seems to be upholding the previous poetic tradition, working within it while also struggling with the work of his predecessors: Bloom writes that in Ashbery's work the reader can "recognize a strength that battles against the death of poetry, yet also the exhaustions of being a latecomer" (Bloom 12). But it is clear that Ashbery commands respect -- perhaps the greatest sign of this came in 1975, when his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror received all three major poetry prizes (the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award). Ashbery has otherwise worked as a journalist and critic: he supported himself while living in Paris for a decade by writing art reviews for the International Herald-Tribune, and followed this by writing art criticism for other publications, including Newsweek. I propose to examine three poems by Ashbery, to tell us how they can better understand this difficult but rewarding writer. I would like to begin with a short and perhaps minor poem by Ashbery, from his 1997 collection Can You Hear, Bird? I choose this poem particularly because I think it gives an excellent introduction to some of the pleasures and difficulties that a reader might encounter in a characteristic Ashbery poem. These difficulties can be significant for some readers, and it is worth noting that Ashbery may be America's most important and most praised living poet, but his work is hardly uncontroversial, and might even be termed polarizing....
This is almost entirely due to Ashbery's style, or styles. Poet and critic Mary Kinzie, in an important essay on his work, refers to "John Ashbery's styles of avoidance -- the stylistic contours of his resistance to the devices of literary meaning allied with realism, plot, and verisimilitude" (Kinzie 246). What Kinzie's comment here suggests is a poet who understands in advance what readers might expect from reading a poem -- not just formal devices like rhyme or meter, but the standard "devices of literary meaning" -- and who constructs the poem to tease those expectations. I think we can understand Kinzie's observation best with reference to Ashbery's 1997 poem "Cantilever":
At present, the meter readers believe that all advances in technology have not benefitted them, in terms of making their work easier or improving their wages or benefits. All the new innovations have done have sufficed to make it easier for management to 'speed up' the work requirements, with no added benefit in terms of wages or ease of work. The leadership of the union is in a state of
This is evident from the first as the poet writes, I am inside someone -- who hates me. I look out from his eyes (1-3). This approach allows him to take a jaundiced view of himself and criticize his own shortcomings, as if they were those of someone else. He says he hates himself, meaning more that he hates some of the things he has done and that he may expect
Improving on-the-job training and streamlining standardized procedures might be a more effective way to meet company objectives. Q3. What legal ramifications, if any, should Sam have considered? Furthermore, Sam's company could be facing serious legal problems, as a result of needlessly increasing educational requirements for readers. In the "landmark Griggs v. Duke Power Co. case of 1971, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against Duke's requirement of high school diplomas or IQ
Municipal WiFi network Potential to spark investment Getting a high-speed connection for a business can be quite costly and most businesses prefer to stay without an internet connection. With a municipal WiFi network, businesses have the potential to access the internet at low cost and without having to make huge initial investments (Ylipulli, Suopajarvi, Ojala, Kostakos, & Kukka, 2014). The marina has the potential to attract many investors and other businesses, but
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Night the Crystals Broke Write where you got inspiration from? The inspiration from this poem comes from my grandmother and her family, who lived through the pogroms and just before the Nazis took over Hungary. The title refers to the Kristallnacht, the event in which the Nazis burned synagogues and their religious items, and broke the windows. They also broke the windows of the local businesses. This poem also refers to
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