Comments on: David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Naming Names

By: Derk Wynand

Derk Wynand — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 06:45:55 +0000

Thanks, David,

you’ve done much to reduce my Ashberry-anxiety. Back to Huizinga I go.

Derl

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 16:27:03 +0000

I gave some thought to Ashbery in this essay in Critical Flame : http://www.criticalflame.org/verse/0112_gould.htm

from the essay : “Ashbery’s near-programmatic deflection of authorial commitment, his practical (and elegant) erasure of any mode of explanatory paraphrase, his dispersal — by way of parody, travesty, surrealism, automatic writing — of any “stable meaning,” all represent a stubborn, maybe courageous refusal of the hegemonic techno-functional mentality. But these “anti-transparency” techniques are also self-defeating. They reinforce the chasm between the “two cultures” of science and art, prose and poetry, ethics and aesthetics. They recapitulate the very dissociation that they were designed to satirize and resist…”

By: Anis Shivani

Anis Shivani — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 00:38:49 +0000

Great work, very well-put thoughts on Ashbery. I’ve been spending the last few months deep into Ashbery. Trying to comprehend the magic and the irritation, the intimacy and the distance, which work at the same time. The Tennis Court Oath, where he seems to say, the hell with it, settles on a polarity, instead of always mediating, almost seems like his best work. He’s so radically “objective” compared to the rest of the New York School, it seems unfair to lump him with Koch et al. Your comment about Ashbery’s influence exceeding his talent should be a great starting point for a necessary discussion. I believe, given present trends in American poetry, where Ashbery–or Ashbery’s afterglow–has become so dominant, this discussion is more urgent than ever. Ashbery or O’Hara? Ashbery goes to one extreme to test the reader’s patience, and in some senses I think that is a virtue–I do think it is. Have we made, partly because of Ashbery’s influence, slipping and sliding too much of a virtue? In any event, great post.