John Ashbery's 80th Birthday

by Sparrow, December 20, 2007

John Ashbery's 80th Birthday

My family and I attended a celebration of John Ashbery, the poet, at Bard College "on the Occasion of his 80th birthday." The event was titled "This Feeling of Exaltation." (We went on Saturday, September 15.) In the photo on the poster, Ashbery looks startled, like he's just been arrested for shoplifting. His "mugshot" graces the sheeny pamphlet we received, also. (It was taken by Lynn Davis.)

Ashbery's method is simple: he avoids all clichés, except those he uses deliberately. (And he tends to employ elegant clichés.) His works, in fact, lack all meaning, in the usual sense of the word. Using this process, he has crafted some beautiful poems, including the one this celebration takes its name from, "A Blessing in Disguise." The poem begins:

Yes, they are alive and can have those colors,

But I, in my soul, am alive too.

I feel I must sing and dance, to tell

Of this in a way, that knowing you may be drawn to me.

He has followed his method, almost the Scientific Method, for half a century, and inadvertently has become America's Greatest Poet.

Ashbery dresses like a Midwestern sales manager. His voice is mild, with a flat Upstate New York accent. (He was born in Rochester.) When Ashbery spoke several phrases in French, I was surprised his accent was not parfait. (He famously lived in Paris for almost 10 years.)

Ashbery had gained some weight since I saw him last, mostly in his shoulders, and he walked with a metal cane. Otherwise, he seemed no different than he had at 60.

Of course, 80 isn't old anymore.

Suddenly during his reading, I noticed how close Ashbery's works are to theater. They are monologues performed by unseen characters, mostly men. And who are the characters? Curators of provincial museums, slightly disaffected architects. They are successful, unhappy, rueful. We meet them at their leisure, when they're at their worst. The unfinished Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle lingers in the background, almost speaking:

That would have been the bonanza, the great volcano,
but as they say in Cheyenne, "Ain't some weekends no
more than sister days of the week when it comes to volleyball
and dimity shrouds," and aquarelles are for the masses

to live off of, when food and conversation run out.
I know because I was a kid with a banana,
but that's for eternity only. All other gaps open out
in the mind of the possessed...

[From "And the Stars Were Shining"]

All successful poets are the same. They learn which poems they can write. These poets may dislike their own writings, and prefer to write Truly Great Poems, but they surrender to the poems which are possible.

We attended the panel on "The Later Work." Robert Kelly, Joan Retallack and Cole Swensen discussed theories about Ashbery's poetry. Ms. Swensen suggested that exile was a theme in his work, and that the death of his younger brother at age 9 affected him. Ms. Retallack saw a trauma circling the poems, but never quite entering them. Mr. Kelly spoke about the way "each line turns its back on the line before it."

Other questions were raised. Are Ashbery's poems somehow Buddhist? Do they concern a continuous present? Or is the past always lurking?

The moderator, Peter Gizzi, noted that in the earlier poems Ashbery's voice was stronger. But "the voice ages, as the body ages." In the later poems, Ashbery is less present, and the world rushes in from outside to fill the poems.

I ran into Ashbery as I was heading to the bathroom after the panel discussion. He sat in the very last row. "Were you here?" I asked him.

"Yes," he replied modestly.

"The whole time?"

"Yes."

Up close, his face resembles a blinking penguin.

"What do you think? That it's all bullshit?"

"No, it was very interesting," he replied with an intelligent smile.

"Now maybe you'll learn how to write poems," I told him.

"No, you never learn that," said John Ashbery.