Writer of the poem, “What is Poetry”, John Ashbery was one of the most critically acclaimed and influential poets of 20th-century America. His works bring forward new challenges as they encourage readers to view poetry with new vigour sans all presumptions about structure and style since they limit and confine it to language and interpretations.
John Bayley wrote that Ashbery “sounded, in poetry, the standard tones of the age. Ashbery has been compared to T. S. Eliot, as someone who is “the last figure whom half the English-language poets alive thought a great model and the other half thought incomprehensible”.
He bagged some of the major American awards for poetry like the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Yale Younger Poets Prize, the Bollingen Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Griffin International Award, and a MacArthur “Genius” Grant.
Ashbery’s poetry possesses some degree of difficulty and was even met with hostility in its initial stages. Intricate in form, and fragmented in structure his poetry produces ambiguous and oblique moods and tones. They often have a dreamlike approach. His poem “What is Poetry?” baffles the readers at first since it does possess an ambiguity in its meaning. Perhaps it is its volatile nature that helps to convey the objective behind the poem so well.
Table of Contents
Structure
“What is Poetry?” by John Ashbery is a fourteen-line poem divided into seven stanzas of two lines each. It does not contain any specific rhyme scheme.
What Is Poetry: Analysis
The poem opens on a note of ambiguity a two or three images seem to have been yoke together consciously. The poet talks about a ‘medieval town’ which could mean that the town was actually ancient or that it was really set in the medieval period. This town contains a frieze of boy scouts from Nagoya. These seem to be random images. He starts talking about snow in this stanza and breaks away to the next stanza.
He talks about snow when people wanted it to snow. All of his statements appear to be in the form of questions and randomly chosen as he then launches himself onto the topic of beautiful images.
The poet asks if we are trying to avoid beautiful images in poetry. He compares us going back to poetry as would be equivalent to going back to a wife, leaving the mistress we desire. There are no solid images or “Ideas, as in this poem.” The lines evoke confusing images his idea extends into the next stanza as well. The poet is of the opinion that poetry is almost like going back to images “as to a wife, leaving / The mistress we desire?”
The poet says that in a place like a school all our thoughts “got combed out” or rather wipe clean and our min would be left like a barren field. He contrasts this with the image of shutting eyes and feeling it for miles around. He intends to express the idea that if we take the time, we can poetry itself. If we open our thought on a vertical path then we might get “some flowers soon?”
Themes And Literary Devices used in What Is Poetry
The poem establishes the idea of what is poetry through random images yoked together. It plays around with the idea of the mind and its interactions with the world via visual stimulation.
In the process, Ashbery uses enjambment style for his poem and ample imageries and metaphors that have been randomly picked to convey a unified idea, i.e, what is poetry? For instance, the image of the boy scouts of Nagoya and the simile where the poet compares us going back to poetry as would be equivalent to going back to a wife, leaving the mistress we desire are the volatile image that forms the foundation of Ashbery’s poetry.
FAQs
What is the tone of ‘What is Poetry?’
The poem is structured with a series of questions and this forms the tone of the poem . The image the poet seeks is extremely volatile and nothing concrete. The tone of the poem, might even to some extent, baffle the reader.
What is the purpose of ‘What is Poetry?’
The poem establishes the idea of what is poetry through random images yoked together. It plays around with the idea of the mind and its interactions with the world via visual stimulation.