"Thinkers Without Final Thoughts": John Ashbery`s Evolving Debt to

"THINKERS
WITHOUT
FINAL THOUGHTS":
JOHN ASHBERY'S
EVOLVING
DEBT
TO WALLACE STEVENS
BY LYNN KELLER
I
Defending the "studious imitations" of an earlier artist in the
work of a contemporary craftsman,John Ashbery once remarked
that a "profound impulse received fromanother artisthas to work
itself out in the sincerest formof flatterybefore the business of
self-discoverycan begin."1 A comparable process in which obvious
imitations of a master precede the evolution of a distinct personal
style is evident in Ashbery's own "working out" of the impulse he
received fromWallace Stevens. In what follows we will trace this
development in Ashbery's early volumes, where a shiftin orientation fromStevens' earlier to his later works accompanies the young
poet's progress toward more subtle and selective adaptations of
Stevens' techniques.
Ashbery's firstmajor collection,2 Some Trees (1956), unabashedly
adopts both Stevens' theories and Stevens' modes, particularly
those of his firstvolume, Harmonium. Some Trees rarelyevokes the
voice of the late meditative Stevens; instead, it echoes the more
fantasticcreations of Stevens the ring-masterand clown, the inventorof such figuresas the paltrynude, the Emperor of Ice Cream,
the Prince of Peacocks.
"The Thinnest Shadow," forexample, could easily be mistaken
for an early poem of Stevens'. Like a number of poems in Harmoinium, it is a brief narrative about an emblematic fantastic
character and is written in short lines reminiscent of nursery
rhymes. In Stevens' fashion, the fancifuladjectives "sherrier" and
"sherriest" seem to have been chosen, or, more accurately, invented, more fortheir sound than fortheir meaning. The strangeness of these words calls attentionto the sing-song rhyme,as does
Stevens' rhymingof pairs such as "Scaramouche" and "barouche"
(CP 61)3 or "negress" and "egress" (CP 71). Ashbery's delineation
of character follows Stevens' habit of using obesity to indicate viand thinness to connote the absence
talityand imaginative fertility,
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of those qualities.4 The grotesque fascination with death evident
beneath the playful surface of "The Thinnest Shadow" is very like
thatof similarlyshort-linedpoems such as "The Worms at Heaven's
Gate," "The Jack-Rabbit," and "Cortege for Rosenbloom." Even
the same rhymeof"cold" and "mo[u]ld" appears in the final stanza
(also four lines long) of Stevens' "The Man Whose Pharynx Was
Bad."
While few poems in Some Trees fitas neatly into a Stevensian
mold as does "The Thinnest Shadow," unmistakable echoes of Stevens' diction and syntax or even of specific lines by Stevens are
generously scattered throughout. One cannot read the opening
the flickeringevening the martins
lines of "Glazunoviana"-"In
grow denser. / Rivers of wings surround us and vast tribulation"without thinking of the parallel syntax and imagery of "Sunday
Morning":
And,in the isolationofthe sky,
At evening,casual flocksofpigeonsmake
Ambiguousundulationsas theysink,
Downwardto darknesson extendedwings.
Though Ashbery in his later works rarelycalls attentionto alliteration and assonance, as Stevens consistently does in Harmonium,
Some Trees does contain passages where sound play is emphasized-e.g.,
I wentto the mountainsto interestmyself
In the fabulousdinnersof hostsdistantand demure.
The foxesfollowedwithendless lights.
(ST 70)
A Stevensian infatuationwith the exotic is evident in Ashbery's
diction and imagerythroughoutthe volume-e.g., "connoisseurs of
oblivion,
'a
novice was sitting on a cornice,
"naked as a roc's
egg," "watching her glide aloft in her peplum of bright leaves."
Some of Ashbery's more outlandish titles,such as "Meditations of a
Parrot" and "Glazunoviana," also follow Stevens' example.
The resemblances between Ashbery's early work and Stevens'
poetry penetrate deeper, however, than these surface delights. A
number of poems in Some Trees explore Stevens' subject matter,
and do so using the rhetoricand syntaxof what Helen Vendler has
identified as Stevens' most characteristicmode, that of "qualified
assertion."5
"The Instruction Manual" stands out as Ashbery's most exuber236
John Ashbery's Evolving Debt to Wallace Stevens
ant poem demonstrating the joys of imaginative flight. Here the
protagonist, like Stevens' "Ordinary Women" (CP 10), flings
monotony behind him and escapes to a richly detailed imagined
world. His mind roams in a realm of pleasing colorful images, like
Stevens' mind-mothin "Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores" (CP 22).
The blatantly cliche romantic figures Ashbery envisions-earnest
young lovers, proud mothers,modest young wives-call attention
to the artificialityof this Guadalahara, as does the cinematic manipulation of the point of view-"Let us take this opportunityto
tiptoe into one of the side streets." Such techniques create an effect
comparable to thatof Stevens' "lingua ... jocundissima" (CP 397);
both poets' methods of exaggeration are simultaneously selfindulgent and self-mocking,at once gaily playful and ironically
self-protective.They underline the fictivenature ofthe imaginative
world while emphasizing the sheer pleasure of such ventures. Fiction is recognized as fictionand appreciated as such; Guadalahara
is humorously identified as the "City I wanted most to see, and
most did not see, in Mexico!"
Yet at the end of "The InstructionManual" Ashbery draws back
from his imagined experience, reminding us that such flight is
"limited" and this place only a temporaryrefuge. In the closing
lines, the church tower reverts into an office building in which a
bored employee is confined. This movement of qualification follows a typical Stevensian pattern,evident, forexample, in "Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores," where the last lines remind us of the
tedious reality of "stupid afternoons" to which we must inevitably
return.
A similar movement of qualification occurs in "Illustration," this
time accomplished in part by the use of Stevensian syntax. Like
"The Thinnest Shadow," this poem presents a Harmonium-like
third-personnarrativeabout an emblematic character. The storyis
delivered playfully,punctuated by puns-"Begging her to come off
it"-and comical details-"A mother offered her some nylons /
Stripped fromher very legs." But the theme is serious, as it is in
most of Stevens' apparentlyplayfulpoetry.The novice's ceremonial
suicide, motivated by a desire to "move figuratively,"is an illustration of the universal need for an imaginative vision of a grander
human potential. Ashbery's "novice," then, is a version of Stevens'
"figure of capable imagination" (CP 249) or "major man" (e.g., CP
387), the exponent of a noble idea of man to which others may
aspire. The ceremonial nature of the novice's behavior is also
Lynn Keller
237
Stevensian; Stevens regarded poetryas a necessary replacement for
religion as well as a formof apotheosis (CP 378).
Like much of Stevens' poetry dealing with the human desire to
"resemble a taller / Impression of ourselves," this poem employs
the tentative syntaxwhich Vendler has identified as characteristic
of Stevens' "search for a middle route between ecstasy and
apathy."6Part II of "Illustration"opens witha generalizedpropo-
sition which explains the meaning and value ofthe suicidal gesture.
Its phrasing is distinctlyStevensian, employing the normative and
optative "must'' and "may." By drawing an analogy between the
woman and moths attracted to a flame, Ashbery then asserts that
those who foolishlydestroythemselves forimaginative enrichment
do not lessen the statureof we who behave more prudently; in fact,
"we twinkle [flame-like]under the weight /Of indiscretions." After
thatpoint, however, the poem calls this affirmationmore and more
into question, as Ashbery progressively weakens the link between
the "novice" and the "we" of author and audience. The optative
mood now carries implications of failure; while "'we might have
soared fromearth," uplifted by her exemplary liberating gesture, it
is not clear that we did in fact do so. Moreover, the woman is now
reduced in stature to "only an effigy/ Of indifference."The poem
closes, as Stevens' often do, with a simile, not asserting is but
merely as if. The simile here-and this is distinctly Ashbery's
touch-acts as a mystifyingveil. While its meaning is opaque, it
seems to sever completely the connection between the woman and
the audience, a split which radically qualifies the image in part I of
genuine spectator involvement in this ceremonial.
"The Mythological Poet" provides another example of Ashbery's
early Stevensian work, this time involving a more abstract
emblematic figure. The poem's subject is a common one in Stevens: the poet's role in combatting the effects of the pressure
exerted by realityor "the world of things" on the ideal world of art.
The "fabulous and fastidious" poet-Stevensian language and
alliteration-described in part II coincides with Stevens' vision of a
poet whose imagination is grounded in "things as they are" and
who can discover Olympia in the crusty smokestacks of suburban
Oxydia (CP 182). Afterrevealing the corruptionand disruption of
ideal beauty by the world of things in part I, Ashbery offersin part
II the possibility that the poet who remains "Close to the zoo,
acquiescing / To dust, candy, perverts" can reestablish harmony
238
John Ashbery's Evolving Debt to Wallace Stevens
and reveal beauty in the mundane. Like Stevens, Ashbery struggles
to affirmthe value and power of the imagination, yet does so with
tentative syntax.There is more longing than certaintyexpressed by
Ashbery's urgentquestions, "For isn't there,/ He says ... ?" "And
oh . . . mightnot . .. ?" Without the disguises provided by Stevens'
strings of appositives and by his extended syntax, Ashbery's
rhetorichere is more obviously one of doubt and longing than that
of his modernist predecessor.
The many poems in Some Trees writtenin dramatic and descriptive modes, using self-protectiveand self-mocking exaggeration,
exotic diction, and elaborate sound play establish a clear link between the early work of Ashbery and of Stevens. Stevens' later
poetry moves away from the buoyant sensuality and dramatic
character of Harmonium toward more discursive, dialectical, and
explicitly philosophical modes. This more meditative and linguistically austere Stevens is one who is more significantforAshbery's
later works, though his presence is sometimes felt in Some Trees.
"Le Livre Est Sur La Table," more than any other poem in this
volume, points toward the Stevensian character of Ashbery's later
poetry.
In "Le Livre" Ashbery displays a Stevensian fondness forpropositional language and for seemingly logical argument. The poem
opens with a grand and abstractproposition. The idea expressed is
central to Ashbery's aesthetics, since his poetry"exists" by ellipses
or "deprivation," and by juxtaposition or "logic / Of strange position." Then a phrase indicating deductive reasoning, "this being
so," introduces a particular example: 'we can only imagine" the
woman who exemplifies ''beauty, resonance, integrity.""Yet we
know what her breasts are"-that is to say, this imagining is a form
of genuine knowledge-"and we give fullness to the dream." As
Stevens frequentlydoes, Ashbery is here asserting the importance
of the imagination's contributionto reality,the value of "The difference that we make in what we see" (CP 344). Two examples of
man "giving fullness" follow: we perceive and speak as if tables
supportbooks and inanimate objects such as pens willfullyaid us in
our endeavors. While apparently furtheringhis logical argument,
Ashbery has subtly introduced its qualification and has shiftedthe
poem into a less confident mood. For his second example-"the
plume leaps in the hand"-is far-fetchedenough to make us question the authenticityof such imaginative domination.
Lynn Keller
239
In selecting such common objects as a book, a table, and a pen as
his examples, Ashbery was, according to a statement he made in
1973, "half-consciously imitative of Stevens." He cites "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven" as an example of the kind of
"meditative verse" he had in mind, in which "the things in a room
and the events of everyday life can enter and become almost fossilized in the poems."7
The questions which conclude section I of "Le Livre" make
Ashbery's qualification of his initial proposition more explicit. Like
Stevens, Ashbery presents observations in the formof questions,8
here demonstratingthat man has no control over a harsh and indifferent cosmos, and that the imagination is powerless to prevent
suffering.Antitheticalpropositions lie at the heart of this poem, as
they do in much of Stevens' work: it is true both that the mind has
dominion over the world and thatthe world controlsthe mind. The
poem gives the appearance of logical argument, while in fact it
represents an exploration in search of some middle way in which
logical distinctions may be blurred and the paradox resolved.
The second section of "Le Livre" continues to investigate the
relationship of mind/artand reality, now using the Stevensian
symbol of the sea representing material reality. Granting "The
maker's rage to order words of the sea"" (CP 130), Ashbery's poem
questions whether in factit mightnot have been "the dark voice of
the sea /That rose" (CP 129) or whether "all the secrets vanish[ed]
when /The woman left" (ST 75). Young Ashbery will not assert, as
Stevens did before him, that "She was the single artificerof the
world / In which she sang" (CP 129); less confident,or less willing
to proclaim what in fact may reflecthuman desire and need more
than truth,he will only remind us of the questions which we must
keep asking.
This pseudo-logical discursive mode of later Stevens acquires a
permanent place in Ashbery's work. However, Ashbery subsequently abandoned some of the later Stevensian techniques with
which he experimented in Some Trees. Like many beginning poets
who wish to refine or establish their skills as craftsmen,the young
Ashbery sometimes worked in strictly regulated poetic forms.
Those he favored tended to require repetition of words or phrases,
thereby creating an effectvery like that of Stevens' less regulated
repetition of key words. Stevens does make some use of repetition
in Harmonium,9 but his more characteristicrepetitions appear in
the later works where common terms recurring in differentposi240
John Ashbery's Evolving Debt to Wallace Stevens
tions or relations lend an appearance of simplicityto the presentation ofcomplex and abstractideas.10The reiterationofconcrete and
ordinaryterms in the three sestinas in Some Trees, and the patterned restatementof lines and words in "Pantoum" and "Canzone"9create a similaraura ofparticularityand clarityin poems with
meanings. At times the mystificationseems
difficultand mystifying
to result fromthe poet's having no intended meaning in mind as he
investigates what meaning might be created automatically by
placing a limited number of words in variouslyarrangedproximity.
At othertimes,in more Stevensian fashion,Ashberyis interestedin
conveying certain sophisticated concepts while restrictinghimself
to a small and simple vocabulary.
This is the case in "The Painter. Here again, we have a
Stevens-like third-personnarrative,and again the sea symbolizes
reality. Stevens' themes abound: the artist's frustrateddesire to
capture "things as they are" (cf. CP 165, II); the problem of
solipsism-is all art self-portraiture?-and the recurrentquestion
from"The Idea of Order at Key West" whether the sea or the self
shapes art's order. Some of the ideas, of course, are distinctly
Ashbery's; forexample, the finalwhiteness of the canvas on which
the painter has captured the sea's portraitreflectsAshbery's notion
that "<puttingit all down" leads ultimately to the same end as
"leaving all out" (TP 3). Nonetheless, the writinghas a consistently
Stevensian character,largelybecause ofthe word repetition,which
is not limited to the recycling of end-words required in a sestina.
"Sea," forinstance, is not one of these end-words, yet appears six
times; "paint," "painter," and "imagine" also recur. The vocabulary of this poem thus seems as limited, as lean, as that of, say,
"Sketch of the Ultimate Politician" (CP 355-6) which begins:
He is the finalbuilderofthetotalbuilding,
The finaldreamerofthetotaldream,
Or will be. Buildingand dreamare one.
There is a totalbuildingand thereis
A totaldream.There are wordsofthis,
Words,in a storm,thatbeat aroundthe shapes.
"The Painter" concludes with an evasive simile using "as though"
(the same device also appears in the thirdstanza), a finalStevensian
touch with which the poet conveys the sense of an explanation, a
truthglimpsed, without in factassertingthat it is the truth.
Many of the traitswhich link Some Trees to Harmonium are not
Lynn Keller
241
characteristicof Ashbery's later work. The indulgent language and
the emblematic personifications,forexample, disappear as Ashbery
develops his own more subdued manner and quieter voice. Progressingfromhis earlywholeheartedadoptionof Stevens' ideas about
poetryand the poet, the maturingAshbery selects those which he
findsgenuinely congenial. He discards some of Stevens' principles,
such as his conception of the poet's hieratic role. Others he qualifies; for example, Stevens' "necessary fiction" becomes, in the
hands ofthe laterpoet, the inescapable fictionwhich is not always a
desirable condition of human perception. Still other principles,
such as the desire forpoetryto escape stiffening
formulationsand to
capture the activityof consciousness, Ashbery reinforcesand extends so that they guide his development of innovative poetic
methods.
II
Virtuallyno Stevensian traitsare evident in the disjointed automatic poetryof Ashbery's second volume, The Tennis Court Oath
(1962). This dramatic shiftaway fromthe obvious Stevensian imitationsof Some Trees seems to have freed Ashberyto get on with
"<thebusiness of self-discovery"; in his next volume, Rivers and
Mountains (1966), he has discovered his own voice and his own
thematic emphases, and manages much more subtle manipulation
oftechniques and principles adapted fromhis immediate predecessor, Wallace Stevens.'1 A transitionalvolume, Rivers and Mountains reveals a movement toward a more discursive mode,
employing longer lines grouped in more extended clusters.
"Into the Dusk-Charged Air" provides an example of how
Ashbery has modified the linguistic experiments of The Tennis
Court Oath in order to create a more communicative poetry,and
how he has adapted Stevens' themes to uses which are distinctly
his own. This playful poem is shaped by the apparently arbitrary
device of requiring that each line mention at least one of the
world's rivers.Each riveris named only once, and is described in a
simple coherent sentence. With this amusing device Ashberydemonstrates the potential for endless variety within the limits of a
given framework,as Stevens does in "Sea Surface Full of Clouds."
Both poems focus on an aspect ofrealitywhich is fluidand moving;
but while Stevens demonstrates the limitless inventive power of
the fertile imagination, Ashbery points to a less flamboyantand
more mundane means of enriching one's experience.
242
JohnAshbery's Evolving Debt to Wallace Stevens
Ashberyavoids the extravagantornamentationof Stevens' diction
and imagery. The tone of "Into the Dusk-Charged Air" is matterof-fact;its lines are often prosaic-"The Mississippi / Is one of the
world's longest rivers, like the Amazon. / It has the Missouri fora
tributary"-and its figuresare frequentlytrite-"the Rhine sings its
eternal song." Yet the poem shows how much variety is available
within the confines of such familiar language. Ashbery's diction
ranges from the formal-"fat billows encrusted the Dneister's /
Pallid flood -to the technical-"The Arkansas erodes /Anthracite
hummocks"-to the banal-"People walk near the Trent"-to the
Parana stinks." Even when the poem comes
colloquial-"The
closest to Stevens' ostentatious sound play- "If... the Albany /Arrestyour development, can you resist the Red's /Musk, the Meuse's
situation?"-Ashbery avoids the recherche terms and exaggerated
sensuality of "Sea Surface"-"Like damasks that were shaken off/
From the loosed girdles in the spangling must" (CP 101). Using a
predominantly common vocabulary, Ashbery simply varies his
sentence structurein order to demonstratethatordinarylanguage is
as variable as the world's rivers,and as interesting.
"Into the Dusk-Charged Air" is only one of many possible examples fromRivers and Mountains which demonstrate the poet's
progress in findingthe kinds of diction which are most meaningful
and comfortableforhim. Ashbery's diction, like Stevens', is varied
and widely inclusive, and both poets continually juxtapose the
abstract against the concrete, the formalagainst the casual. By the
time he was writingRivers and Mountains, however, Ashbery had
established his own range of diction, which descends fartherdown
the scale of colloquialism than Stevens'-e.g., "I'd like to bugger
you all up, /Deliberately falsifyall your old suck-ass notions"-and
ascends less high into the realm of elaborate decoration. Stevens
believes "that in poetrybigness and gaity are precious characteristics ofthe diction"'(NA 152), and he thereforetries to bring new life
to fancywords that have vanished into dusty lexicons. In contrast,
Ashbery,in his mature work, is more at home revitalizingthe worn
prosiac language of cliche discourse and folk aphorisms. A
tongue-in-cheek manner, a campiness whose self-mockeryalmost
disguises sincerity, usually accompanies Ashbery's most heavyhanded cliches. Yet these exaggeratedly tritestatementsare almost
always mixed with or closely followed by less conventional formulations reinforcingthe same notions; thus the reader cannot mistake
the poet's underlying seriousness.
Lynn Keller
243
For example, in "The Ecclesiast," Ashberypresents the lamentable universality and "humdrum"-ness of sufferingin language
which is not only proverbial, but also so heavily overlaid with
cliches thatone mightbe tempted to dismiss as disdainful mockery
the third verse paragraph-.--"Forthe shoe pinches, even though
it fitsperfectly./
Apples were made to be gathered,also the whole
host of the world's ailments and troubles." One cannot do so,
however, since the bleak perspective of these lines is legitimized
(as well as alleviated) in the movingly direct lines which follow:
"and across the sunlight darkness is taking root anew / In intense
activity.You shall never have seen itjust this way /And thatis to be
your one reward." By slightlymodifyinghackneyed phrases or by
mixing cliches with less banal diction, Ashbery infuses fresh
energy into time-wornexpressions.
Ashbery's most earnest declarations of feeling are now usually
distinguished by slack syntaxand casual diction-"What is agreeable / Is to hold your hand. The gravel / Underfoot.The time is for
coming close." (RM 14)-sometimes interspersed with simple
lyricism
I prefer"you'' in the plural,I want"you,"
You mustcome to me, all goldenand pale
Like the dew and the air.
AndthenI startgettingthisfeelingofexaltation.
(RM 26).
The language with which Ashbery expresses his more private
feelings slides easily into cliche, allowing him to controla complex
dual tone in which he simultaneously makes a sincere statement
and comments wrylyupon it. For instance,
... You mustnot,then,
Be verysurprisedifI am alone; it is all foryou,
The night,and the stars,and the waywe used to be
(RM 14)
contains a genuine lament, but is presented with an ironic humor
that indicates the speaker has some perspective on his own selfindulgence, and on the commonness of his situation.
The refined control of shiftingtones, the increasing sureness of
voice and naturalness of diction in Rivers and Mountains accompany the appearance of those subjects which predominate in
Ashbery's later work. The word "subjects" is perhaps inadequate,
since, as the poet has stated, "There are no subjects in the usual
sense, except the very broad one of an individual consciousness
244
John Ashbery's Evolving Debt to Wallace Stevens
confrontingor confrontedby the world of external phenomena."'12
In any case, Rivers and Mountains is the firstvolume in which
Ashbery's interestin poetry as a record of mental process is clearly
apprehensible. Here again Stevens is surely a guide, forit is he who
defined modern poetry as "The poem of the mind in the act of
finding / What will suffice" (CP 239) and who emphasized that
poetryis a process in a constantlyadvancing present. Both men are
content to be "Thinkers without final thoughts / In an always incipient cosmos" (OP 115), or, in Ashbery's words, "continuing but
ever beginning / My perennial voyage" (RM 44).
Ashbery's "subject" revolves around broad epistemological
questions concerning how and what we know. Like Stevens, he
offers varied and often contradictoryanswers. Since both poets
identifyfluxas the only constant in the universe, both are intenton
being true to ever-changing perceptions ratherthan tryingto establish any fixed truths.Truth, forwhich they do search, is a relative
matter,more locatable in the process of searching than in any point
reached:
... Each moment
Of utteranceis the trueone; likewisenone are true,
Only is the boundingfromair to air,a serpentine
Gesturewhichhides the truthbehinda congruent
Message,the way air hides the sky.
(RM 27)
Ashbery has found strikingways to embody in his poetic techniques this conviction that what most closely corresponds with
truthcan be mirroredonly in the motion between one moment of
consciousness and the next. In the late '60s Ashbery said that the
characteristicdevices in his verse- "ellipses, frequent changes of
tone, voice (that is, the narrator'svoice), point of view" are intended "<togive an impression of flux."'13These shiftsand bewildering omissions are the source of much of the difficulty of
Ashbery's poetry. By depriving the reader of many of the clues by
which he customarilylinks particular passages to earlier and later
ones, these techniques serve to bind the reader to the immediate
moment in the poem. He is thereby forced to participate in the
poet's metaphysical stance, to "[have] /The progression of minutes
by accepting them, as one accepts drops to rain / As they forma
shower, and without worrying about the fine weather that will
come after" (RM 32). This is not to say that there are no recurrent
images or othertraditionaldevices which give unityand coherence
Lynn Keller
245
to Ashbery's poetic statements. But there is an insistence, both
thematicand technical, on the certitude of continual change, on the
irreducible complexity of experience, and on the necessity of accepting both these conditions.
The constant evasion of perception and articulation by protean
realityor truthis the thematicfocus of "Clepsydra," the poem which
marks Ashbery's full entrance into the meditative and abstractly
metaphysical mode of late Stevens. The opening of the poem demonstrates that Ashbery is furtherdeveloping Stevens' method of
giving fullness to abstractions by frequent reference to concrete
objects and ordinaryphenomena; both poets describe realms which
are at once "mysterious and near" (RM 28). The question which
opens "Clepsydra," "Hasn't the sky?" would seem to arise froma
specific context, as if abstracted from the middle of a particular
dialogue. The narration and explanation which follow also seem
tied to an actual moment and landscape; but because all
antecedents are missing, the concrete termstake on a metaphorical
quality without their figurativereferencebeing clear. Not until the
tenth line is it apparent that "Hasn't the sky?" is a truncated formulation of the eternal human query about the nature of the "basic
principle operating behind" the universe. We are then told thatthe
answer is as ungraspable as a mirage, as obscure as the motion of
river fronds, as unfixable as a waterfall that is perpetually descending to another level.
The poem is a mimetic representationof that figurativewaterfall
or water-clock (a clepsydra is a water-clock); it attempts to follow
the stream of consciousness which, in its acute responsiveness,
cannot stand still. The movement mightbe temporarilyallayed by a
solipsistic stance-we
"'are / The reply that prompted the
question"-but this peace is as ephemeral as all other "truths."
Momentaryflashes of insightare the most one can hope for:"it was
these / Moments that were the truth,although each tapered / Into
the distant surrounding night" (RM 28). As the poem goes on to
explore the nature of these moments, the question of their permanence and coherence, and the meaning of the time that surrounds
them,the process of the searching consciousness is reflected in the
poem's syntacticstructure.To convey the uninterruptedyet varied
flow of experience, Ashbery often relies on remarkablyextended
syntax. In this Stevens is almost certainly a model,14 for one of
Stevens' most distinctive skills is his ability to draw out a single
sentence over as many as eighteen lines (see, forexample, CP 466,
246
John Ashbery's Evolving Debt to Wallace Stevens
II) by using appositives and qualifications. Moreover, Stevens' use
of extended syntax reflects the same principles that apparently
motivate Ashbery's: a desire to capture the world's undulation
in one's syntax,and a belief that an object or experience can be
most accurately rendered by an inclusive portrayal in which the
whole can be understood from the 'sum of its complications'
(NA 87).
Good examples of Ashbery's typical methods of syntacticalelaboration and suspension are provided by two consecutive sentences
from"Clepsydra" (11. 16-36, RM 29). The firstof these, which begins, "There was only a breathless waste," is ten lines long. The
second and third lines are an apposite description of "breathless
waste," furtherdeveloping Ashbery's revision of the Christian
proposition, "In the beginning was the Word." The next fourlines
qualify the idea presented in the previous three, beginning with
the mock-academic formulation,"Though one must not forgetthat
the nature of this / Emptiness, these previsions, / Was that...
Again terms are expanded in figurativeappositives typical of Stevens before moving into a furtherqualification introduced by "ex-
cept that. . . ." Ashbery extends the second of these sentences over
eleven lines by using a protracted simile comparing the way "an
imaginary feeling" "protected its events and pauses" to a telescope's "protection" of a distant mountain vista. He develops the
simile in such detail that the mountain scene, originally merely a
tangential comparison, becomes the object of focus. On the next
page he offersan alternative simile, which he again elaborates fora
number of lines until a slight shiftin the poem's focus again takes
place. In these ways, Ashbery recreates the meandering of human
consciousness in a world without fixed truths. Even where the
sentences are shorter,Ashbery relies heavily on logical terms of
contradictionand qualification, such as "but" and "although." This
reflectshis epistemological faiththat the most lasting and truthful
perspectives are those which are "ncomplicatedlike the torrent/ In
new dark passages" -a phrase whose double entendre on literary
and geological ".passages" is undoubtedly intentional.
Because Ashbery tries to render the complexity of individual
consciousness as he finds it, paradox is a prevalent in his work as it
is in Stevens'. Some of these paradoxes are simple and rathercommon, being based on man's ability to entertain contradictoryemotions simultaneously-"a feeling, again, of emptiness, but of richness" (RM 30). Others are conceptually more difficult;forexample,
Lynn Keller
247
it is the "'egotistical" "blindness" of what I take to be two lovers
(though theymightbe two aspects of one consciousness) "turned in
on each other" to the exclusion of the rest of the world that allows
them access to clear visions ofthatworld. These momentsof clarity,
in turn,are ephemeral and ungraspable yet permanent,isolated yet
joined. What happens in any moment is distinct,intended forthat
moment alone; nonetheless that present is impossible to locate,
scarcely called into being before it is gone. Like Stevens'
paradoxes, and his proliferating resemblances and metaphors,
Ashbery's paradoxes point ultimately toward an affirmationof essential unity in the cosmos.15 Ashbery's universe is like a mobius
strip-a "single and twin existence"-and by accepting the twists
of paradox the poet is able to affirm,"In this way any direction
taken was the rightone, / Leading firstto you, and throughyou to /
Myself that is beyond you and which is the same thing as space"
(RM 32).
Ashbery shares some of Stevens' "passion foryes" (CP 320), but
as the child of a later and even darker time, Ashbery restrictshis
affirmationswithin narrowerlimits.Though there may be a "sphere
of pure wisdom," we will never see in it more than groping
shadows, and even this reductive experience will be retained only
as if it were the impression left by a powerful dream. Unable to
celebrate presences, Ashbery takes comfort in "non-absence"
(RM 27).
The semantic content of Ashbery's lines thereforetends to reinforce the doubting aspect of Stevens' qualified assertions. Comparing Ashbery's use of Stevensian linguistic patternsin Rivers and
Mountains with those in Some Trees, we are more conscious of the
absence of buoyant optimism in the later volume. There is nothing
particularly cheering about statements like these from "Clepsydra":
It maybe assumedthatyou have won,thatthis
Wooden and externalrepresentation
Returnsthe fullecho ofwhatyou meant
or
... and you
Mustwear themlike clothing,movingin the shadowof
Yoursingleand twinexistence,wakingin intact
Appreciationof it,while morningis stilland beforethe body
Is changedby the facesof evening.
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John Ashbery's Evolving Debt to Wallace Stevens
Yet the very moderation of such statements gives them an aura of
authority and wisdom which is nonetheless reassuring and affirming.
Ashbery shares with Stevens, or rather with Stevens at the soberer wintryend of his polarized vision, a sense of man's isolation
in the cosmos. Both poets regard poetryas the attemptto bridge the
gap between man and his world. Though Ashbery is more conscious of the limits of what words or imagination can
accomplish-of "the dividing force / Between our slightest steps
and the notes taken on them" (RM 32)-both men concur that:
Fromthisthe poem springs:thatwe live in a place
That is notour own and, muchmore,notourselves
And hardit is in spite ofblazoned days.
(CP 383)
This painful sense of alienation provides the impulse for "The
Skaters," the long poem that culminates Rivers and Mountains.
The thematic areas explored in "The Skaters" are closely related
to those which Stevens usually investigates-the value of the
imagination, the artist's "rage to order," the necessity of art's discarding old forms and replacing them with fresh ones. A more
sophisticated version of "The Instruction Manual," "The Skaters"
centers on the playful presentation of imaginative voyages. But this
more complicated and philosophical poem is less concerned with
the realms to which the imagination transportsus than with the
processes of voyaging and returning,of integratingimaginative experience into ordinaryexperience, and of relating the order established in art to the order or disorder of reality. The structureand
style of the poem reflectthe complexity and fluidityof these ideas
and of the experiences fromwhich they derive.
Like Stevens' later long poems, which are structuredto follow
the movement of the thinking mind, "The Skaters" does not progress froma particularstartingpoint to a climactic finish.Instead, its
formis like a musical theme and variations in which the same ideas
recur,though seen fromvaried perspectives and in differentstyles
as in a mind attemptingto refine its understanding. Thus the four
numbered sections, though distinct,are more complementarythan
progressive. Section I is based primarilyon memories of childhood
attempts to escape boredom and loneliness through imaginative
adventure.' Part II is a collage of visions of adult travel-some
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249
remembered, some imagined,-which appear and collapse, creating a sense of disconcerting impermanence and wondrous inventive fertility.Part III presents a generally more propositional and
analytic examination of imaginative voyaging. Part IV provides an
acceleration of the shiftingscenes, images, and voices, until from
the spinning fragmentsof life, real and imagined, arises a momentaryvision of perfectorder. These sections are interdependent; not
only themes, but also motifs from earlier sections, such as the
perspective lines of page 36 and the skaters' lengthening arches of
page 37, appear repeatedly in later sections. Moreover, each section, like the waterfall of "Clepsydra," perpetually "Drums at differentlevels" (RM 27) as the narrationshiftsfromacademic exposition, to lyrical description, to metaphysical elaboration, to cliche
visions in archaic diction, to commentaryon the poem itself or of
the poet's voices upon each other.
The whole poem moves like the skaters who
... elaboratetheirdistances,
to the mass,
Takinga separateline to its end. Returning
theyjoin each other
Blottedin an incrediblemess ofdarkcolors,and again
reappearingto takethe theme
Some littledistance.
(RM 37)
Therefore, what is important,as Ashbery declares, is not an individual passage or even the impression made by the whole, but
ratherthe action by which it is created and the structurein which it
unfolds. What is of interest is the mind in the act of finding-"the
rhythmof the series of repeated jumps, fromabstract into positive
and back to a slightlyless diluted abstract" (RM 39).
Given their shared preoccupation with change and process, it is
not surprisingthat Stevens and Ashbery rely heavily on a common
group of images and metaphors. The phenomena of weather and
climate-sun, snow, etc.-and the units into which we divide cyclical time-day and night, winter and summer, morning and
afternoon-are as prevalent in Ashbery's poems as in Stevens'. In
Stevens' work these terms can be grouped into orderly systems;
certain mental states, ideas, colors, places are linked to particular
seasons.17 This seems to be less true of Ashbery's poetry,but "The
Skaters" does provide evidence that by the mid-'60s Ashbery was
using terms denoting environmental conditions in extended
metaphors forinner states.
250
John Ashbery's Evolving Debt to Wallace Stevens
Though Ashbery develops key metaphors over the course of the
entire long poem, he does not, as Stevens does, sustain them on a
consistent metaphorical plain. Perhaps because of his recognition
that if a poet "keep[s] harping on this traditional imagery[,] the
reader will not be taken in" (RM 58), Ashberykeeps one step ahead
of his reader by ostentatiously shiftingback and forthbetween the
literal and metaphorical. "The Skaters," like Stevens' "The Comedian as the Letter C," is based on the ancient trope by which a
voyage represents both the progress of life and the process of selfdiscovery. Aware thathis readers will be familiarwith this convention, Ashbery calls attentionto his own artificeby providing obvious clues which allow us to distinguish literal voyaging fromimaginative and metaphorical voyaging. By presenting so many of his
scenes as pure fantasyto begin with,Ashbery forestallshis readers
feeling smug or bored when they recognize, for instance, that a
rainy day is a projection of the speaker's dampened spirits,and an
alligator infested swamp his slough of despond (RM 45). Since
these meanings are made blatantlyobvious, the reader is forced to
focus on the more challenging problem of understanding the mental process which brings the speaker to the point where "again the
weather is fine and clear'' and the journey ''is on.'' Such
anticipatorydeflation is a common Ashbery technique.
Though amusing, Ashbery's self-conscious manner of calling attention to the artificeof the literaryconventions he employs is not
merely a game. As we have seen, it is a technique by which he
directs the reader's attentiontoward the real issues at hand without
reducing the fun of his poetry. Images, he implies, are merely a
vehicle forideas: "The human brain, with its trayof images /Seems
a sorcerer's magic lantern" (RM 36). Ashbery wishes to take pleasure in sleight of hand without evading the poet's more serious
responsibilities. By transformingthe "maple seed pods ... splatteringdown" into "birch pods ... clatteringdown" into "magnolia
blossoms" which "fall with a plop" in section IV, Ashbery pursues
Stevens' principle that the "motive formetaphor" is to provide the
"exhilaration of changes" (CP 288). He employs a varietyof related
images since any number of them can serve equally well as instances of a single governing process.
Ashbery has a differentreason forundercuttingthe more cliche
figureshe uses, and that is genuine ambivalence; cliches are both
true and dangerous, useful and inadequate. For Ashbery,all verbal
formulations"are a kind of flagellation, an entity of sound / Into
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251
which being enters, and is apart" (RM 34). That is to say, words
become an essential part of the experience they grow out of, yet
there is a painful and unavoidable gap between expression and
experience. Words are valuable since they do "[bring] down
meaning," but they offera dangerous temptationto falsifytruthin
accordance with "wishful thinking." Ashbery often links this
"<wishful thinking'" with traditional patterns of language and
thought.When he wishes to emphasize that an attitude is particularly reductive in its simple optimism, he often uses diction and
syntaxwhich are not only cliche, but also archaic:
And away they pour, in the sulfuroussunlight,
To the aqua and silver waters where stands the glistening
white ship
And into the greatvessel they flood,a motleyand happy crowd
Chanting and pouring down hymnson the surfaceof the ocean.
(RM 46)
In so doing, Ashbery stresses that this comfortable perspective
from the past is too familiar and too easy; the contemporary poet, in
contrast,
... is best
Face to face with the unsmiling alternatives of his nervewracking existence.
Placed squarely in frontof his dilemma, on all foursbefore the
lamentable spectacle of the unknown.
(RM 41)
This conviction is in line with modernist principles, as is Ashbery's
dictum that the world should be purged of all trash from the past
(RM 37, 49). To accomplish this "general housekeeping" (RM 49)
Ashbery here institutes the poetic "flame fountain" in which conventional scenes appear only momentarily "in the gaps in the
smoke" before they are effaced.
Nonetheless, as we saw in "Clepsydra," Ashbery's hopes concerning the power of poetry are somewhat less sanguine than Stevens'. Despite Ashbery's desire for novelty and freshness, the
scenes he paints do remain essentially conventional. Moreover, he
no longer shares Stevens' confidence in the artist's ability to shape
words in new ways which will enlarge men's thinking and enable
men to attain a more noble, more heroic stature. The poet's attempts to develop new, more sophisticated forms of "finer expression" are frustrated because "The human mind / Cannot retain
252
John Ashbery's Evolving Debt to Wallace Stevens
anythingexcept perhaps the dismal two-note theme / Of some sodden 'dump' or lament" (RM 34). The poet thereforefinds himself
trapped:
So back we go to the old,
imprecisefeelings,the
Commonknowledge,the importanceofduly suffering
and
the occasionalglimpses
Of some balmyfelicity.
(RM 40)
...
Words, like the painter's perspective lines, provide only a seeming order. Speaking of the ordering effectof these, and, by extension, of poetic lines, Ashbery says they provide
... some comfort
afterall, forour volitionto see
mustneeds conditionthese phenomenato a
certaindegree.
But it would be rashto derivetoo muchconfidence
froma situationwhich,in the last analysis,
scarcelywarrantsit.
WhatI said firstgoes: sleep, death,and hollyhocks
And a new twilightstained,perhaps,a slightly
unearthlierperiwinkleblue,
But no dramaticargumentsforsurvival,and please
no magicjustification
of results.
(RM 53)
While Stevens asserts that"A candle is enough to lightthe world.
/ It makes it clear"' (CP 172), Ashbery will only go so far as to
declare that the poet's task is "4tohold the candle up to the album"
(RM 41).18 He makes no proclamations about the clarity of that
illumination,nor does he strikea hieratic pose. Nonetheless, as one
who colors the sky a "slightly unearthlier" shade, Ashbery is carrying on, in chastened form,the Romantic tradition in which the
poet acts as private interpreterof the heavens. Ashbery's romantic
roots, which are also Stevens, are most apparent in his next volume, The Double Dream of Spring (1970).
III
Some of the ways in which Ashbery's work grows out of the
Romantic traditionhave already been suggested: his dissatisfaction
with inherited formsand restrictionswithin each one (supposedly)
cannot accurately reflectreality; his aspiration toward originality;19
his use of materials fromcommon life and ordinary speech; his
probing of individual experience; his focus on the imagination, on
Lynn Keller
253
its place and powers in a world unlike itself.Ashbery's awareness
of the division between his own conscious nature and the unconscious world which surrounds him suggests, as Robert Pinsky has
noted (speaking not just of Ashbery,but of contemporarypoetry in
general),
and modernistpoetry-and,
a continuity
betweencontemporary
beyond that, a continuitywith the Romantic poetryof the
nineteenthcentury.Monumentaland familiar,the conflictsare
between the conscious and the unconsciousforceswithinthe
a flowof
mind:betweenthe idea ofexperienceas unreflective,
absolutelyparticularmoments,and the realityof language as
abstractcategories.20
an arrangement
of perfectly
reflective,
Pinsky has demonstrated that these broad conflicts have been inherited by virtually every modern poet, and that "it sometimes
seems hard to find a modern poem which does not touch on the
problem at least glancingly, as a kind of second subject."'21 What is
striking about The Double Dream of Spring, however, is the
number of its poems in which these conflictsare the primarysubject. Furthermore,the volume is notably more lyrical than those
preceding, and rural settings are more frequent. In typical Romantic fashion, a landscape or a particular scene often provides the
stimulus for the poet's meditation; his private problems present
occasions forexploring universal dilemmas. The poet is repeatedly
presented as a quester or pilgrim advancing into the unknown,
seeking to understand his place in a mysteriouscosmos. As in many
nineteenth-centuryRomantic poems, the passage of time, the role
of memory,and the relation of the individual's past to his present
and future are dominant themes. Careful examination of Double
Dream reveals that Ashbery's modifications of Romantic techniques and ideas are extensions of the modificationswhich Stevens
imposed.
Most of the nineteenth-century English Romantics and their
American transcendentalistcounterpartsvalued the imagination as
a unifyingor reconciling power throughwhich man could perceive
the unity of his own mind with the divine power governing and
infusingnature. The imagination was itselfgod-like, being, in Coleridge's words, "a repetition in the finitemind of the eternal act of
creation in the infiniteI AM."22 Stevens' theoryof the imagination
involves a shiftin emphasis appropriate to a more thoroughlyskeptical age; forhim what the imagination provides is explicitly a substituteforthe divine, ratherthan a connection with or reenactment
254
John Ashbery's Evolving Debt to Wallace Stevens
of divine creation. "Afterone has abandoned a belief in god," Stevens says, "poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's
redemption" (OP 158). The role ofthe imaginationis to produce the
supreme fictionthat"must take the place /Of emptyheaven and its
hymns"(CP 167). Stevens celebrates the artist'sabilityto renew "the
fictionof an absolute" (CP 404). In his opinion, "The finalbelief is
to believe in a fictionwhich you know to be a fiction,there being
nothingelse. The exquisite truthis to know thatit is fictionand that
you believe in it willingly" (OP 163).
Ashbery,who shares Stevens' skepticism about the existence of
any nonfictive ordering ideal, less "willingly" believes in the
imagination'sfictivereplacement. Ashbery seems burdened by his
consciousness thatall artis a grand "as if,"and thatthe imaginative
perception of beauty and order does not necessarily accord with
external reality.Though he himself may live according to fictions
which assign meaning and impose order, he seems to feel more
ambivalence about the fantasticnature of these supports than Stevens does. Mankind, Ashbery states, is simply "fond of plotting
itineraries"and "our foreshortenedmemories will keep us going"
(DD 31-2). What remains forhim to celebrate is thatmen do keep
going, even when theyare conscious that,in fact,"There never was
any excuse forthis" (DD 32).
While frequentlyundercuttingor mocking imaginative embellishmentofreality,Ashberyacknowledges the need forfictionsthat
allow us to feel at home and in control: "But the fantasymakes it
ours, a kind of fence-sitting/ Raised to the level of an esthetic
ideal" (DD 18). He freely concedes that his aesthetic practices
rest on a falsifyingbase, but one which he nonetheless accepts
because it tempers harsh experience and helps us in "learning to
accept / The charityof the hard moments as they are doled out"
(DD 19).
Such "fence-sitting"is evident in the volume's attitudestoward
language and toward perception in general. The Romantics strove
to portraytheir feelings accurately by binding themselves to careful description of their own immediate perceptions. In order to replace received truthswith original and private ones, or at least
with original formulations,they looked to the particulars of experience.23Stevens, too, was attuneto the differencebetween "an"
and "the" (CP 255). Despite the notable abstractionof his poetry,
Stevens sought an "'abstractionblooded" and tried to ground his
poetry in observations made "with a clinging eye" (CP 55). Like
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255
Stevens and the Romantics, Ashbery values particularity,but he
lacks faith in the mind's ability to hold or convey authentic details. Moreover, the language available to Ashbery is not suited to
conveying freshperceptions of the physical world.
This is made clear in "Definition of Blue," a mock-academic, and
nonetheless serious, statementabout the problems encountered by
a post-Romantic post-modernistpoet who is committed to the inherited values of individuality and originality.His society is one in
which "mass practices have sought to submerge the personality,"
and irremediable "'packaging" has "supplanted the old [i.e., immediate, particular]sensations." Moreover, "today there is no point in
looking to imaginative new methods / Since all of them are in constant use." The contemporary poet is condemned to work with
time-wornlanguage and techniques. But Ashbery affirmsthat this
medium can nonetheless contributenot only to the accuracy of art's
general portraitof "all being," but also to the understanding of"the
exact value" of the individual in his particular time and place:
The mostthatcan be said forthem[i.e., the methodsin use] further
Is thaterosionproducesa kindofdustor exaggeratedpumice
it,becominga medium
Whichfillsspace and transforms
In whichit is possible to recognizeoneself.
(DD 53)
Thus the apparently parodic versions of traditionalmotifs-such as
those involving quest and pilgrimage, as in "Soonest Mended'"and of traditionallyricforms-such as the cliche aphoristic rhymed
couplets of "Some Words" are seriously, as well as mockingly,
intended. The element of parody, indicating the author's halfapologetic embarrassment, protects him against charges of sentimentality while allowing him to use these formulae as genuine
expressions of his ideas.24
At the same time, "fence-sitting"Ashbery does not abandon his
attempts to "make it new" and to cleanse his poetic language of
what Shelley termed the "film of familiarity."25For example, in
"For JohnClare" Ashbery exploits the resources of prose as a flexible vehicle for creating new effects.The prose is jagged, full of
sentence fragmentsand ellipses, but its rhythmsand diction convey
the effectof speech idiom:
There oughtto be roomformorethings,fora spreadingout,
like. Being immersed in the details of rock and field and
slope-letting them come to you foronce, and then meeting
themhalfwaywould be so mucheasier.
(DD 35)
256
John Ashbery's Evolving Debt to Wallace Stevens
Casual syntax and colloquial language are mixed with more
academic formulationsand vocabulary-"It is possible that finally,
like coming to the end of a long, barely perceptible rise, there is a
mutual cohesion and interaction"-and with vivid description"The pollarded trees scarcely bucking the wind ... Clabbered
sky." Such prose (which Ashberywill explore more fullyin his next
volume, Three Poems) has strong affinitieswith Stevens' discursiveness, though Ashbery's mild voice avoids the magisterial tone
prevalent in Stevens' late work. Stevens, too, relies heavily on
prose rhythms and syntax. Nominative construction-"it
is
possible that," "there is"-are common also in his poetry. Stevens
often uses academic rhetoric,which, though sometimes mockingly
presented, nonetheless propounds his own doctrines.26 And of
course, as we have noted, Stevens too favorsconditional termssuch
as "ought" and "would." Most important,both poets rely on varied
voices and varied diction to give authenticity to conglomerates
formedfrom"sacked speech" (CP 530).
"French Poems" demonstrates a differenttack Ashbery sometimes takes in attemptinglinguistic renewal. As stated in the notes
at the end of the volume, he firstwrote these pieces in French and
then translated them into English "with the idea of avoiding customaryword-patternsand associations." Though composed in verse
lines, the syntax is that of rather elegant prose and the generally
lengthy sentences flow smoothly. Yet there is a pronounced unfamiliarity,a foreign aura, in the sentence construction: "But the
existence of these things and especially / The amazing fullness of
theirnumber must be /For us a source of unforgettablequestions."
The similes and explanatory elaborations, though employing concrete terms,are elusive and give a quality of strangeness to familiar
words and ordinarysyntax:
All kinds of things exist, and, what is more,
Specimens of these things, which do not make themselves
known.
I am speaking of the laugh of the squire and the spur
Which are like a hole in the armorof the day.
Similar surprising details and unexpected words or constructions
appear in many poems which are not translations.
The aesthetic and epistemological principles behind Ashbery's
idiosyncratic choice of terms and images relate closely to those
determining the strange terminology in which Stevens outlines his
"mundo." Both poets wish to highlight the mysteriousness to be
Lynn Keller
257
found within the ordinaryand banal-"The extreme of the known
in the presence of the extreme / Of the unknown" (CP 508).
Moreover, both men are attemptingto refineand redefine concepts
which have been evolving forcenturies; the oddness of their formulations is a natural outgrowth of their desire for an accuracy
which they believe conventional patterns of expression do not
achieve. Hence, Ashbery as artcriticreserves his highest praise for
those whose work cannot be explained in any terms other than its
own,27and repeatedly quotes Stevens' phrase, "a completely new
set of objects," as the goal of an artist'screation.28
Having evolved many of his own techniques fromthe works of
Stevens, Ashbery since The Double Dream of Spring has diverged
increasingly from his modernist mentor. Nonetheless, Stevens'
idiom can be heard as an undertone throughoutmuch of Ashbery's
later poetry. Moreover, Stevens' desire to represent "the act of the
mind" has been the guiding principle forall Ashbery's more recent
experiments. The mental process which most interested Stevens,
however, was that of the imagination creating a fiction which
"mediates between the requirements of desire and the conditions
of reality."29Thus, as Vendler has pointed out,
In spiteofhis announcedintentto remainthe poet ofreality,to
"hasp on the survivingform/Of shall or oughtto be in is," . . .
[a]gainand again,[Stevens]foundhimselfseduced awaytowhat
oughtto be, forsakingall descriptionand reportingof present
and past in favorof the normativeand the optative,the willed
and the desired.30
In Ashbery's subsequent volumes it becomes clear that,unlike Stevens whose poetry so often described the world as it ought to be
viewed, the contemporarypoet's commitmentis to describing the
world as it is and to illustratingthe mysteriousprocesses by which
it is apprehended.
The Universityof Wisconsin, Madison
FOOTNOTES
1 John Ashbery, "A Place for Everything," Art News, 64 (1970), 33, 73. He is
discussing the collages of Anne Ryan.
2 Three hundred copies of a volume entitled Turandot and
Other Poems were
printed by Tiber de Nagy Gallery, New York, in 1953. Almost all of the poems in this
volume were reprinted in Some Trees.
3 Parenthetic citations forquoted poems use the following abbreviations to referto
the following editions: CP Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems of Wallace Ste-
258
John Ashbery's Evolving Debt to Wallace Stevens
vens (New York: Knopf, 1954). OP Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous (New York:
Knopf, 1957). NA Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the
Imagination (New York: Knopf, 1951). ST John Ashbery, Some Trees (New York:
Ecco, 1978). RM John Ashbery, Rivers and Mountains (New York: Ecco, 1977). DD
John Ashbery, The Double Dream of Spring (New York: Ecco, 1976). TP John
Ashbery, Three Poems (New York: Viking, 1972).
4 See CP 152, 178, 197, 269 for examples of
Stevens' use of the adjective "fat" to
express the potent poet's sensual engagement with reality and his imaginative
fecundity. Thinness indicates an alienation fromthe "physical poetry" in which we
live and, consequently, imaginative sterility. Thus the "large red man" who reads
from the "poem of life" is contrasted with the ghosts whose hearts are "thin" and
"spended" (CP 424). Similarly, the men of Haddam who are blind to the richness of
their world are characterized as "thin" (CP 93).
5 Helen Vendler, "The Qualified Assertions of Wallace Stevens," The Act of the
Mind: Essays on the Poetry of Wallace Stevens, ed. Roy Harvey Pearce and J. Hillis
Miller (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1965), p. 163.
6 Helen Vendler, On Extended Wings: Wallace
Stevens' Longer Poems (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1969). p. 13.
7 "The Craft of John Ashbery" (an interview by
Louis A. Osti), Confrontations 9
(1974), 88.
8 As Vendler has pointed out, questions are "one of the natural forms in which
[Stevens'] mind casts its observations" (On Extended Wings, p. 20); they "serve as a
qualified way to put a premise" (p. 18). For examples of Stevens using questions to
suggest an argument, see CP 168, 173, 202-203.
9 For example, the closing stanza of "The Ordinary Women" is a repetition of the
opening stanza; the last line of "The Worms at Heaven's Gate" repeats the firstline.
Variations of phrases repeat in "Anecdote of Men by the Thousand," "Anecdote of
the Prince of Peacocks," "Cortege for Rosenbloom," "Valley Candle," and "Domination of Black."
10 The following passages provide examples of Stevens' later use of repetition:
A tune beyond us as we are,
Yet nothing changed by the blue guitar;
Ourselves in the tune as if in space,
Yet nothing changed, except the place
Of things as they are and only the place
As you play them, on the blue guitar,
Placed, so, beyond the compass of change.
It is possible that to seem-it is to be,
As the sun is something seeming and it is.
The sun is an example. What it seems
It is and in such seeming all things are.
Thus things are like a seeming of the sun
Or like a seeming of the moon or night
Or sleep. It is a queen that made it seem
By the illustrations nothing of her name.
Her green mind made the world around her green.
The queen is an example .. . This green queen
In the seeming of the summer of her sun
By her own seeming made the summer change.
Lynn Keller
(CP 167-168)
(CP 339)
259
11 At no point do I intend to imply that Stevens is the only significant influence on
Ashbery's work. In the poems of Rivers and Mountains, forinstance, the influences
of Mallarme, Valery, Baudelaire, and Eliot (particulary Four Quartets) can often be
detected. For discussions of these and other influences see David Shapiro, John
Ashbery: An Introduction to the Poetry (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1979).
12 Contemporary Poets of the English Language, ed. Rosalie Murphy (Chicago: St.
James Press, 1971), p. 33.
13 Contemporary Poets
of the English Language, p. 33.
14 Many earlier English poets, including Milton,
Wordsworth, and Tennyson, have
skillfully employed extended syntax. Stevens, however, is unquestionably the master of syntactical extension in his own generation, and both his methods and motives
seem especially close to Ashbery's.
15 The interdependence and ultimate unity of opposites is a recurrent motif in
Stevens; see, forinstance, CP 215-216, 392. On p. 37 of On Extended Wings, Vendler
points out that Stevens, attached to "paradoxical logic," deceptively employs the
language of logical discrimination, not to distinguish, but to identify different or
alternative categories with each other.
16 See Ashbery's discussion of the autobiographical aspect of this poem in "Craft
Interview with John Ashbery," The Craft of Poetry: Interviews from the New York
Quarterly, ed. William Packard (Garden City: Doubleday, 1974), pp. 119 and 123.
17 Bernard Heringman lists Stevens' "stock symbols" as follows: "The moon, blue,
the polar north,winter, music, poetry and all art: these consistently referto the realm
of the imagination, order, the ideal. The sun, yellow, the tropic south, summer,
physical nature: these refer to, or symbolize, the realm of reality, disorder, the
actual" ("Wallace Stevens: The Use of Poetry," The Act of the Mind, p. 1). For
furtherdiscussion of Stevens' symbolism and his seasonal cycle, see Frank Kermode, Wallace Stevens (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1960), pp. 34-37; Richard Macksey,
"The Climates of Wallace Stevens," The Act of the Mind; pp. 185-223; Northrop
Frye, "The Realistic Oriole: A Study of Wallace Stevens," Wallace Stevens: A Collection of Critical Essays ed. Marie Borroff(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963)
pp. 161-176.
"I I am following Harold Bloom in using these two quotations to compare the two
poets. See "John Ashbery: The Charity of the Hard Moments," Salmagundi 22-23
(1973), 112. In that article Bloom presents Ashbery as a descendent of Emerson and
of the English Romantics, thereby identifyingthe Romantic roots on which I focus in
discussing Double Dream.
19Originality is an important standard which Ashbery applies not only to his own
work but also, as an art critic, to that of other artists. For a few examples, see
"American Sanctuary in Paris," Art News Annual, 31 (1966), 164; "Can Art be Excellent if Anybody Could Do It?" New York Herald Tribune, (Paris), 8 Nov. 1961,
p. 11; "Poet-Painter Reflects Self in Paris Show," New York Herald Tribune (Paris),
16 Feb. 1965, p. 5.
20 Robert Pinsky, The Situation of Poetry: Contemporary Poetry and Its Traditions (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1976), p. 47.
21 Pinsky, p. 61.
22 S. T.
Coleridge, Biographica Literaria, ed. J. Shawcross (London: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1907, rpt. 1973) I, 202.
23 As Robert Langbaum has pointed out in The Poetry of Experience (New York:
Norton, 1957), "the romanticist's formulation is evolved out of experience and is
continually tested against experience" (p. 22). He states that Romanticism "is essentially a doctrine of experience, an attempt to salvage on science's own empiric
grounds the validity of individual perception against scientific abstractions" (p. 27).
24 See
Pinsky's discussion of Berryman, especially pp. 25, 36-37.
25 P. B. Shelley, "A Defense of
Poetry," English Romantic Writers, ed. David
260
JohnAshbery's Evolving Debt to Wallace Stevens
Perkins (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967), p. 1085. For a discussion of the
Romantics' opposition to "custom" in both perception and poetic language, see
M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic
Literature (New York: Norton, 1971), pp. 377-384.
26 Dry academic rhetoric is particularly prevalent in Parts of a World. See, for
example, "Prelude to Objects" (CP 194), "Connoisseur of Chaos" (CP 215-216),
"Extracts from Addresses to the Academy of Fine Ideas" (CP 252-259).
27 For example, discussing the work of Brice Marden ("Grey Eminence,"
Art
News, 71 [1972], 64), Ashbery said, "To create a work of art that the critic cannot
even begin to talk about ought to be the artist's chief concern; Marden has achieved
it." Reviewing an exhibit of work by Jasper Johns ("Brooms and Prisms," Art News,
65 [1966], 58), Ashbery remarked, "Johns is one of the few young painters of today
whose work seems to defy critical analysis, and this is precisely a sign of its
power-it can't be explained in any other terms than its own, and is therefore necessary." Analyzing why "the 20th century, whatever else it may be, is the century of
Matisse, Picasso, and Gertrude Stein," and why the adventurous works of Stein and
Picasso remain so tremendously exciting, Ashbery says, "Both Picasso and Gertude
Stein manage to escape critical judgment by working in a climate where it simply
could not exist. Picasso sets up new forms whose newness protects them from criticism: there are no standards by which to judge them except the painter's own as
gleaned from other works by him" ("G. M. P.," Art News, 69, [1971]), 46, 74.
28 See, for example, "Brooms and Prisms," p. 58 and "Willem de Kooning," Art
News Annual, 37 (1971), 26.
29 Ronald Sukenick, Wallace Stevens: Musing the Obscure (New York: New York
Univ. Press, 1967), p. 3.
30 Vendler, On
Extended Wings, p. 21.
Lynn Keller
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