A Necessary Difficulty: The Poethics of Proximity in John Ashbery and Michael Palmer David Mc Carthy Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of East Anglia School of Art, Media and American Studies September 2015 © This copy of this thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived from there must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. Table of Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... i List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................................... ii Introduction: The (Dis)Enchantment of Self with Self ......................................................... 1 Chapter 1: The Poethics of Proximity: A Necessary Difficulty ......................................... 24 (1.1) The New Criticism: Containment and Consensus ................................................. 25 (1.2) “Poethics:” “Ethics and Aesthetics are One and the Same” ................................. 33 (1.3) Proximity .................................................................................................................... 37 (1.4) “Response-Ability” .................................................................................................... 41 (1.5) A Necessary Difficulty ............................................................................................... 46 Part I: “The Facts Have Hinged on my Reply:” The Face-to-Face Encounter in John Ashbery ................................................................................................................................... 52 Chapter 2: The “Aesthetics of Indifference” in Some Trees and The Tennis Court Oath 58 (2.1) The (Mis)Instruction Manual ................................................................................... 60 (2.2) Thinking Outside the Box ......................................................................................... 64 (2.3) The “Aesthetics of Indifference” .............................................................................. 69 (2.4) “Opposition Without Oppositionality” in Some Trees ........................................... 73 (2.5) The “Practice of Outside” ......................................................................................... 78 (2.6) Repetition and Difference in The Tennis Court Oath ............................................. 81 Chapter 3: “Fundamental Absences” in Rivers and Mountains and The Double Dream of Spring ...................................................................................................................................... 89 (3.1) Displacement (or This Space Meant) in Rivers and Mountains ............................. 92 (3.2) The Poem as Event .................................................................................................... 99 (3.3) “This Leaving-Out Business” in “The Skaters” ................................................... 105 (3.4) “Begin[ning] Again:” Reading as Writing in The Double Dream of Spring ...... 110 (3.5) Ash(es)bery: Absence and/as Presence .................................................................. 114 Chapter 4: “The Pragmatic and Kinetic Future” in Three Poems and “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” ................................................................................................................... 121 (4.1) A Pragmatic Conversation ..................................................................................... 121 (4.2) Ashbery’s “Whether System” in Three Poems ..................................................... 126 (4.3) “No Longer a Figure of Speech But an Act” ........................................................ 134 (4.4) “(an)Other” Tradition ............................................................................................ 138 (4.5) The “Poethics” of Ekphrasis .................................................................................. 142 (4.6) Face-to-Face with Ashbery ..................................................................................... 148 Part II: “Difficult but not Impossible:” The Saying of the Said in Michael Palmer ..... 158 Chapter 5: Outside(r) Influence in Blake’s Newton and The Circular Gates .................. 164 (5.1) Ekstasis: The Practice of Being an Outsider ........................................................ 166 (5.2) The Poetics of Derivation in Blake’s Newton ........................................................ 174 (5.3) Against Containment .............................................................................................. 183 (5.4) A “Community without Community” ................................................................... 189 (5.5) Outside Influences: The Serial Poems of The Circular Gates .............................. 195 Chapter 6: Writing with Nothing at its Centre in Without Music and Notes for Echo Lake ....................................................................................................................................... 205 (6.1) Erasure and Embodiment in Without Music ........................................................ 211 (6.2) The Performance of the Lyric ................................................................................ 221 (6.3) Poetry and Dialogism .............................................................................................. 225 (6.4) The Dialogic Poetics of Notes for Echo Lake ......................................................... 232 Chapter 7: Saying the Unsayable in First Figure and Sun ............................................... 244 (7.1) Gestures of Possibility ............................................................................................. 245 (7.2) Language as Gesture in First Figure ..................................................................... 250 (7.3) The Language of the Unsayable ............................................................................. 257 (7.4) The Saying of the Said ............................................................................................ 264 (7.5) Writing and Reading Otherwise in Sun ................................................................ 275 Conclusion: A Rejection of Closure ................................................................................... 290 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 297 Abstract Name: David Mc Carthy Submission Date: September 2015 Title: A Necessary Difficulty: The Poethics of Proximity in John Ashbery and Michael Palmer Both John Ashbery and Michael Palmer are noticeably absent from recent surveys of the ethical turn in innovative American poetry during the latter half of the twentieth century. By analysing the work produced during the first half of their careers as they write a poetic subject into existence, this thesis will demonstrate that the reason for this absence is due to the “necessary difficulty” of their respective poetic projects. Rather than identifying particular personal and political issues that might help explain away the difficulty of their work, my reading of Ashbery and Palmer will illustrate how difficulty is the constitutive feature of the ethical considerations and commitments informing their attempt to call attention to the initiating encounter between self and other that permits ethical praxis in the first place. Using a methodology derived from Mikhail Bakhtin’s aesthetic theories and Emmanuel Levinas’ phenomenological ethics, Ashbery and Palmer will be shown to enact a “poethic sensibility” that reconfigures reading and writing poetry as a way of living in the social world of others as a responsive and responsible subject. Furthermore, the concern they exhibit regarding their own ethical subjectivity will be shown to extend to the reader’s, as s/he is encouraged to realise his/her own “response-ability” through the lived experience of proximity engendered by their necessarily difficult texts. By departing from the presupposition that the poem and the self it represents and/or articulates are intended to be properly comprehended by another person, this thesis will explore the ethical encounter that occurs between the poet and the reader at the very limits of the known and knowable, where “(my)Self” encounters “(an)Other” in its absolute, irreducible alterity as the constitutive moment of ethical subjectivity. i List of Abbreviations BN………………………….. Blake’s Newton , Michael Palmer (1972) CA………………………….. Codes Appearing: Poems 1979-1988 , Michael Palmer (2001) CG………………………….. The Circular Gates , Michael Palmer (1974) CP…………………………... Collected Poems 1956-1987 , John Ashbery (2008) DDS………………………… The Double Dream of Spring , John Ashbery (1966) DI…………………………… The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays , Mikhail Bakhtin (1981) FF…………………………… First Figure , Michael Palmer (1984) NFL…………………………. Notes for Echo Lake , Michael Palmer (1981) OTB………………………… Otherwise Than Being: or Beyond Essence , Emmanueal Levinas (1981) RM………………………….. Rivers and Mountains , John Ashbery (1966) S…………………………….. Sun , Michael Palmer (1988) “SPCM”……………………..“Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” in SPCM SPCM………………………. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror