“I’ve often been quoted: ‘No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.’ But another distinction I made is: however sad, no grievance, grief without grievance. How could I, how could anyone have a good time with what cost me too much agony, how could they? What do I want to communicate but what a hell of a good time I had writing it? The whole thing is performance and prowess and feats of association. “
I resisted John Ashbery. In part, for his popularity, and in part, like so many prophets, because I was suspicious of his followers. And so, I came to read Some Trees out of a sense of obligation to be a good citizen in the world of poetry. But the experience of encountering Ashbery’s work for myself, firsthand, and (as much as possible) on my own terms, setting aside outside influence–was significant. Ashbery’s work subverted my expectations even as it illustrated to me the significance of subverting expectation as a fundamental aspect of poetry.
Simply subverting expectation is not, however, enough. There is a sense of coherence in Ashbery’s work, at the same time that one has the exciting sense that any line might follow any other line. That is, simultaneously, there is surprise, and freedom, and a sense of intellectual wildness, tempered by a governing theme. What I learned from Ashbery is that there are specific tactics one can deploy to keep a poem moving–both for the reader and the writer.
Continue Reading “On Ashbery and Surprise”
