11/29/2023 0 Comments Dont quit poem analysis![]() ![]() Only gradually do we realize that it describes the public world we were living in just moments ago, that some prophet has arrived with news of the commonwealth. ![]() One may at first regard the combination as hermetically private. When the poet does put them together the combination comes as a shock. Just so, the present is indeed a world none of us has ever known, because the words to describe it can be put together only after the fact. The difficulty is that his poetry is so public, so accurately a picture of the world we live in, that it scarcely resembles anything we’ve ever known. Why shouldn’t people expect access to a poetry so widely honored for what it is doing with their language? Why shouldn’t they expect a poet, as Emerson promised, to apprise us “not of his wealth, but of the commonwealth”? Those are not retrograde or feeble expectations, and because I think they are powerfully met in the work of John Ashbery I would champion him not as our most private poet, but our most public one. ![]() But to arrive at that dead end is exasperating, if only because the reputation leads you to expect much more. Anyone who has ever been baffled by Ashbery’s work will understand the temptation to conclude that here is a poet so private he is truly private, so difficult he is truly inaccessible. We are not used to hearing that John Ashbery is among them. We are used to hearing of poets so private they speak for all of us. ![]()
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