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John Ashbery and Surrealism

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John Ashbery and Surrealism John Ashbery and Surrealism David Spittle Submitted for Doctor of Philosophy Newcastle University School of English Literature, Language & Linguistics April 2016 Page Left Intentionally Blank ii Abstract This thesis will demonstrate that an engagement with Surrealism alongside John Ashbery’s poetry can provide a mutually beneficial discussion through which to further understand both. Through its phenomenological attention, Ashbery’s poetry configures the everyday experience of his reality in a way that responds to, and invites, a surrealist perspective. The first chapter explores Joseph Cornell, collecting and the ‘found object’, with an emphasis on Ashbery’s first collection, Some Trees (1956). The second Chapter examines dreams and dreaming throughout Ashbery’s first four collections, ending with an analysis of Three Poems (1972). Merleau-Ponty is used to demonstrate the oneiric implications of Ashbery’s poetics of phenomenology as a basis for Surrealism, whereby a perception of reality becomes comparable to a dream. My third chapter presents Ashbery’s book-length poem Flow Chart (1991) alongside the Canadian filmmaker, Guy Maddin. The concept of noise, alongside the pioneering presence of Surrealism in early radio, is used to understand treatments of memory that connect Maddin’s films to Ashbery’s interruptive poetics and lead both to be understood through Georges Bataille’s notion of ‘The Labyrinth’. The fourth chapter discusses the relationship between visual perspective and a surrealist imagining of childhood. This chapter returns to the enduring importance of ‘The Skaters’ in order to understand the poem’s relation to collage, ‘play’ and metaphor as key examples of how Ashbery’s poetry comes to realise Breton’s surrealist dictum: ‘always for the first time’. iii Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to thank my two supervisors, John Beck and Kirsten Macleod, without their support, intelligence and guidance this project would not have been possible. I am grateful for Newcastle University for providing me with the funding that allowed me to travel to America. I am indebted to the staff at Houghton Library at Harvard University, for their patience in helping me explore their archival resources. I would also like to acknowledge the friendly coffees, lunches and conversation I enjoyed with Oli Hazzard, while at Harvard. Recalling this period of research would not be complete without extending my deepest gratitude to both David Kermani and John Ashbery for their generosity, friendliness and hospitality. I am also incredibly grateful for the enthusiastic, warm and open correspondence with Guy Maddin. In the challenges, confusion and frustration that came with navigating a PhD, the support of friends has been essential: thank you to John and Kris for being my bastions of fun, friendship and poetry; to the infinite and caffeinated pep-talks of Alex Adams and Mani Sharpe; the basement solidarity and conversational companionship of Simon, Chris, Rob, Sadek, Faye, Tom, Claire, Joe, Marie, Janelle, Helen and Bea; and the lifeline phone- calls of film chat, inspiration and understanding from Anthony Lee. A huge thank you to Steve for his technological wizardry – the salvation of computer literacy and patience. To Charlotte, for joining me in this Northern voyage, for always listening/enduring, and for being there for me - with happiness and love and plentiful humour, I cannot thank you enough. Finally, I want to thank my parents, for their consistent belief, kindness and encouragement, in allowing me to realise and pursue my love of poetry. iv Page Left Intentionally Blank v Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ iii Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................... iv Contents ....................................................................................................................................... vi Table of Figures ......................................................................................................................... viii Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................ viii Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1 Not as a Movement but in the Movement of Relation: A Dialogue .................................................... 5 The Experience of Experience as the Experience of Surrealism ......................................................... 9 Chapter 1 .................................................................................................................................... 15 The Found Object .............................................................................................................................. 18 Found Objects in Cornell and Ashbery .............................................................................................. 20 ‘Glazunoviana’: The Poem arranged as Found Object ...................................................................... 24 The Found Object beyond Some Trees .............................................................................................. 30 Collecting in Ashbery and Cornell .................................................................................................... 33 Collecting and the Collection ............................................................................................................. 36 The Forest .......................................................................................................................................... 44 Chapter 2 .................................................................................................................................... 51 Some Trees: Dreams of Distraction, Painting and Strange Position ................................................. 52 The Tennis Court Oath: Dreams of America ..................................................................................... 57 ‘The Skaters’: Dreaming a Surrealist Passage ................................................................................... 66 The Double Dream of Spring: Dream Time ...................................................................................... 72 Three Poems: Shaped in the New Merging ....................................................................................... 77 Three Poems and Maurice Merleau-Ponty ........................................................................................ 80 Contradiction: ‘The Harmonious Sceptic’ Dreaming Reality ........................................................... 83 Chapter 3 .................................................................................................................................... 88 Ashbery and Maddin .......................................................................................................................... 90 The Radio and Surrealism .................................................................................................................. 94 Interruption as Interference…………………………………………………………………………98 vi Interference as Memory……………………………………………………………………………109 The Labyrinth ................................................................................................................................... 123 Chapter 4 .................................................................................................................................. 130 First Films and Tripping the Childhood Levers ............................................................................... 131 Surrealist Perspectives ..................................................................................................................... 137 Giorgio de Chirico ........................................................................................................................... 139 Three Hundred Things: Illustrated Play ........................................................................................... 147 Skating, Impossibility and Play ....................................................................................................... 154 Itself and Other: Language as Play .................................................................................................. 158 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 165 Appendix ................................................................................................................................... 173 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 177 Filmography ............................................................................................................................. 186 vii Table of Figures Figures 1 – 7 appear in the ‘Appendix’ whereas Figures I-IV are included in the body of the text in Chapter 4. This presentation distinction is made in response to the way in which the analysis addresses the image. In Chapter 1 the images act as a helpful reference to turn to in order to consolidate the analysis. In contrast Chapter 4 relies on a closer familiarity to convey its argument, thus the pictures appear
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