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FIT TO COPE WITH OUR OCCASIONS; JOHN ASHBERY^S PLACE IN POSTWAR AMERICAN POETRY BY GAVIN DAVID HERD A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON ProQuest Number: 10017300 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10017300 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT Fit to Cone with Our Occasions: John Ashberv^s Place in Postwar American Poetry The object of this thesis is to develop terms by which Ashbery’s contribution to postwar poetry can properly be evaluated. I argue that the key term to such an evaluation is ‘occasion’. This term has three distinct critical functions. First, following the poet, I suggest that an Ashbery poem is occasioned by its circumstances (which is to say that events give rise to the poem, but do not determine its shape). Second, I show that Ashbery’s development can be charted in terms of his widening sense of what constitutes the occasion of the poem. Third, I compare Ashbery’s responses to occasions which have shaped postwar American poetry with the responses of important contemporaries. In the introduction I describe how I arrived at the term ‘occasion’, and indicate its value to Ashbery criticism. Chapter One argues that Ashbery’s occasional aesthetic is rooted in the collaborative milieu of the New York School. Chapter Two shows why the idea of an occasional poetry might have seemed attractive to Ashbery by setting his early writing against the work of the middle generation. In the third chapter I consider Ashbery’s second volume. The Tennis Court Oath, and show how, exceptionally, it embodies a monumental notion of the occasion. Chapter four compares how Ashbery and George Oppen responded to the pressure on sixties American poets to make political pronouncements. Chapter five considers how Ashbery, Ed Dorn and Adrienne Rich responded to the increasing use of literary interviews to explain contemporary poetry to a baffled reading public. The final chapter shows how Ashbery’s recent poetry strives to square his desire to write for the occasion, with the late impulse to ensure his poetic survival through influence, and considers his importance to British poets John Ash, Peter Didsbury and Denise Riley. CONTENTS Abstract 2 Contents 3 Acknowledgements 5 Abbreviations 7 Introduction 9 1. A little announcement on this festive occasion: Ashbery and Collaboration 20 Hurry up please it's time The occasion of an utterance matters seriously Poetic offerings A little announcement on this festive occasion 2 Two Scenes 64 Finding an opposition Finding a theme Naming o f recent scenes of badness 3 The View from Paris: America and Americans in The Tennis Court Oath 116 Monumental studies of America The newspaper is ruining your eyes There is a cure Conclusion 4 Experimenting in Public: Ashbery and Oppen in the sixties 172 Sense or sensibility Intimate and declarative The logic o fyour situation It is difficult now to speak o f poetry An occasional dream 5 The Arrival of the Interviewer 231 The literary interview Ashbery and the interview Visitors and conversations Trying to explain Questions o f power Nostalgia for the present 4 6 Enduring Occasions: Ashbery’s Poetic Legacy 287 Influential concerns Figures of influence The ongoing story Conclusion 335 Sources Consulted 340 Acknowledgements My gratitude goes to everyone who has given me their help and time while I have been writing this thesis. In particular I wish to thank my supervisor, David Trotter. His continued encouragement and advice have been invaluable to me. John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Alex Katz, and John Ash were all kind enough to allow me to interview them; for which I thank them here. Abi, and my parents, have supported me constantly. I am deeply grateful to them, as I hope they know. I am grateful also for the helpfulness and courtesy of staff at University College London Library, the British Library, the John Rylands Library, the New York Public Library, and the Houghton Library, Harvard University. For Abi Cooper List of Abbreviations ST Some Trees TCO The Tennis Court Oath RM Rivers and Mountains DDS The Double Dream of Spring TP Three Poems VN The Vermont Notebook SP Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror HD Houseboat Davs AWK As We Know ShT Shadow Train W A Wave FC Flow Chart HL Hotel Lautréamont ATS And The Stars Were Shining CB Can You Hear. Bird NN A Nest of Ninnies RS Reported Sightings: Art Chronicles 1957-1987 Introduction Introduction I started this thesis with two objectives in mind. First, I hoped to develop a critical terminology which would enable me both to appreciate the continuities in Ashbery’s writing, and also to understand the considerable changes of tone and style which mark his poetry. Second, I wanted to gain a sharper sense of Ashbery’s importance by comparing his work with that of significant contemporaries. Reading his poetry with the first of these objectives in mind, the term that began to suggest itself was ‘occasion’. It is a word which, in one form or another, occurs frequently in Ashbery’s writing. More to the point, it is a word which (so it began to seem) comes to the surface in the ways one might expect of a term which was of some significance to the poet. For a start, throughout Ashbery’s career, ‘occasion’ occurs in poems which are in some sense or another pivotal. In ‘The Instruction Manual’, for instance, we encounter a man who, ‘wears a moustache, which has been trimmed for/ the occasion’ (ST, 15). In ‘Soonest Mended’ we are offered ‘an occasional dream, a vision’ (DDS, 18). In ‘A Worsening Situation’ we are told that it is, ‘True, there are occasions/ For white uniforms and a special language’ (SP,3). While in Flow Chart we are warned of teen-age girls and male adolescents with fruited complexions and scalps, who were going to make it difficult for one should an occasion arise. (FC,17) Ashbery can also be seen groping rather clumsily for the term in those poems where inspiration seems temporarily to have deserted him. Thus, in ‘Litany’, we learn that ‘Some think him mean-tempered and grufF But actually his is an occasion for all occasions’ (AWK,53). While in ‘Another Chain Letter’ (a title denoting weariness), he notes that ‘each turned back// To his business, as is customary on such occasions’ (ShT,4). It is a word which finds its way into eccentric texts as well as central ones. The 10 poem that occurs towards the end of the prose work The Vermont Notebook notes that, Tn a screech the occasion has disappeared, the clamor resumed like a/ climate’ (VN,93). The word also crosses over into Ashbery’s criticism, tending to appear when Ashbery is discussing works and writers of particular importance to him. Thus, with Hebdemeros. it is noted (approvingly), that Chirico ‘invented for the occasion a new style a new kind of novel’.^ And finally, it is a term which, Ashbery’s revisions show, has given him pause for thought. A glance at the earlier versions of the poem ‘Blue Sonata’(originally titled ‘Sonatina’) show that the line which, in the final version, reads, ‘To utter the speech that belongs there’, first read, ‘To utter the speech rehearsed for that occasion’, and then, ‘To utter the speech that fits there’, before emerging in its final version.^ It is part of the argument of this thesis, then, that the term ‘occasion’, and the complex phenomenon it denotes, is of considerable importance to the way Ashbery thinks about poetry. I do not propose to steal my own thunder by rehearsing this argument here. I would, however, like briefly to indicate the critical value of approaching Ashbery’s poetry through the word ‘occasion’. In the first place, it allows us to understand further the degree to which Ashbery’s poetry is Postmodern. Accounts of Postmodern poetics invariably focus on the difference between Modernist and Postmodern poetry, and ‘occasion’, I think, can help us to appreciate this difference. Thus, the kind of occasion Eliot is drawn to is typified by ‘Ash Wednesday’. ‘Ash Wednesday’ is not a poem whose language is over-burdened by attention to the particularity of the occasion. That said, Ash Wednesday is, of course, an occasion of sorts. The point about such occasions however (the solstice is another favoured by Eliot), is that they occur every year. Ash Wednesday, that is, is one of those occasions in ’ John Ashbery, ‘The Decline of the Verbs’, Bookweek. vol.4, no. 15 (18 Dec 1966) p.5. ^ John Ashbery, ‘Sonatina’, in ‘The John Ashbery Papers’, Houghton Library, Harvard University. 11 the calendar, which, because they seem to signify continuity (because they are ritualised) give the poet permission to disregard the circumstances of the particular day in question. Eliot seeks out those special occasions which, in effect, can be seen to transcend themselves. Arguably Yeats was rather more worldly in his choice of poetic occasion. ‘Easter 1916’, for instance, is clearly more concerned than ‘Ash Wednesday’ to focus on the particular matter in hand, on the circumstances of the Dublin uprising.