John Ashbery

 John Ashbery was born July 28, 1927 in Rochester, NY, and was raised near Lake Ontario. Ashbery received his undergraduate Degree from Harvard, and a Masters from Columbia University. Ashbery won many awards for his work: Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award, Bollingen Prize, Griffen Poetry Prize, and the Yale Younger Poets Series.

Ashbery I know for his exceptional writing abilities; “One moment the poem may sound like someone is talking on a bus, at another like an old work of literature or book of philosophy, then like a comic strip or a popular song.” Ashbery writes as it comes to mind without organizing his thoughts. Koch believes this is showed in his excellent execution of sestinas, which is not really done too often. Sestinas have 39 lines: Six 6 line Stanzas, a set of 6 words each line in the 6 line stanzas throughout.

The Painter is an example of a sestina:

THE PAINTER

Sitting between the sea and the buildings

He enjoyed painting the sea’s portrait.

But just as children imagine a prayer

Is merely silence, he expected his subject

To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,

Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.

So there was never any paint on his canvas

Until the people who lived in the buildings

Put him to work: “Try using the brush

As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait,

Something less angry and large, and more subject

To a painter’s moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer.”

How could he explain to them his prayer

That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?

He chose his wife for a new subject,

Making her vast, like ruined buildings,

As if, forgetting itself, the portrait

Had expressed itself without a brush.

Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brush

In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer:

“My soul, when I paint this next portrait

Let it be you who wrecks the canvas.”

The news spread like wildfire through the buildings:

He had gone back to the sea for his subject.

Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!

Too exhausted even to lift his brush,

He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings

To malicious mirth: “We haven’t a prayer

Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,

Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!”

Others declared it a self-portrait.

Finally all indications of a subject

Began to fade, leaving the canvas

Perfectly white. He put down the brush.

At once a howl, that was also a prayer,

Arose from the overcrowded buildings.

They tossed him, the portrait, from the tallest of the buildings;

And the sea devoured the canvas and the brush

As though his subject had decided to remain a prayer.

The Painter is a beautiful example of the control of opacity Ashbery possesses in his writing, as well as an example how he switches pronouns “he”, “we”, “I” consistently seemingly to mislead us or keep us away.

The Instruction Manual  is a perfect example of Ashebery’s ability to be opaque:

THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL

As I sit looking out of a window of the building

I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new metal.

I look down into the street and see people, each walking with an inner peace,   

And envy them—they are so far away from me!

Not one of them has to worry about getting out this manual on schedule.   

And, as my way is, I begin to dream, resting my elbows on the desk and leaning out of the window a little,

Of dim Guadalajara! City of rose-colored flowers!

City I wanted most to see, and most did not see, in Mexico!

But I fancy I see, under the press of having to write the instruction manual,   

Your public square, city, with its elaborate little bandstand!

The band is playing Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov.

Around stand the flower girls, handing out rose- and lemon-colored flowers,   

Each attractive in her rose-and-blue striped dress (Oh! such shades of rose and blue),

And nearby is the little white booth where women in green serve you green and yellow fruit.

The couples are parading; everyone is in a holiday mood.

First, leading the parade, is a dapper fellow

Clothed in deep blue. On his head sits a white hat

And he wears a mustache, which has been trimmed for the occasion.

His dear one, his wife, is young and pretty; her shawl is rose, pink, and white.   

Her slippers are patent leather, in the American fashion,

And she carries a fan, for she is modest, and does not want the crowd to see her face too often.

But everybody is so busy with his wife or loved one

I doubt they would notice the mustachioed man’s wife.

Here come the boys! They are skipping and throwing little things on the sidewalk

Which is made of gray tile. One of them, a little older, has a toothpick in his teeth.

He is silenter than the rest, and affects not to notice the pretty young girls in white.

But his friends notice them, and shout their jeers at the laughing girls.   

Yet soon all this will cease, with the deepening of their years,

And love bring each to the parade grounds for another reason.

But I have lost sight of the young fellow with the toothpick.

Wait—there he is—on the other side of the bandstand,

Secluded from his friends, in earnest talk with a young girl

Of fourteen or fifteen. I try to hear what they are saying

But it seems they are just mumbling something—shy words of love, probably.

She is slightly taller than he, and looks quietly down into his sincere eyes.   

She is wearing white. The breeze ruffles her long fine black hair against her olive cheek.

Obviously she is in love. The boy, the young boy with the toothpick, he is in love too;

His eyes show it. Turning from this couple,

I see there is an intermission in the concert.

The paraders are resting and sipping drinks through straws

(The drinks are dispensed from a large glass crock by a lady in dark blue),   

And the musicians mingle among them, in their creamy white uniforms, and talk

About the weather, perhaps, or how their kids are doing at school.

Let us take this opportunity to tiptoe into one of the side streets.   

Here you may see one of those white houses with green trim   

That are so popular here. Look—I told you!

It is cool and dim inside, but the patio is sunny.

An old woman in gray sits there, fanning herself with a palm leaf fan.   

She welcomes us to her patio, and offers us a cooling drink.   

“My son is in Mexico City,” she says. “He would welcome you too   

If he were here. But his job is with a bank there.

Look, here is a photograph of him.”

And a dark-skinned lad with pearly teeth grins out at us from the worn leather frame.

We thank her for her hospitality, for it is getting late

And we must catch a view of the city, before we leave, from a good high place.

That church tower will do—the faded pink one, there against the fierce blue of the sky. Slowly we enter.

The caretaker, an old man dressed in brown and gray, asks us how long we have been in the city, and how we like it here.

His daughter is scrubbing the steps—she nods to us as we pass into the tower.

Soon we have reached the top, and the whole network of the city extends before us.

There is the rich quarter, with its houses of pink and white, and its crumbling, leafy terraces.

There is the poorer quarter, its homes a deep blue.

There is the market, where men are selling hats and swatting flies

And there is the public library, painted several shades of pale green and beige.

Look! There is the square we just came from, with the promenaders.   

There are fewer of them, now that the heat of the day has increased,   

But the young boy and girl still lurk in the shadows of the bandstand.   

And there is the home of the little old lady—

She is still sitting in the patio, fanning herself.

How limited, but how complete withal, has been our experience of Guadalajara!

We have seen young love, married love, and the love of an aged mother for her son.

We have heard the music, tasted the drinks, and looked at colored houses.   

What more is there to do, except stay? And that we cannot do.

And as a last breeze freshens the top of the weathered old tower, I turn my

gaze

Back to the instruction manual which has made me dream of Guadalajara

Questions we will explore:

What is The Instruction Manual about? And why did Ashbery choose to write about this?

As readers what did you think Ashbery wanted us to conclude?

As a Poet from The New York School of Poets do his sentiments of NYC differ from O’Hara’s?