Blog for November 2nd

One of the poets that we have studied this week who most challenges the way that language can represent reality is John Ashbery. His poem “The Instruction Manual” has, like most of his poems, little to do with the title itself. Instead the reader is treated to a free flowing, almost stream of consciousness, look at an imagined view of the city of Guadalajara. The instruction manual, rather than providing the material for the poem, becomes the inspiration for the piece only in that the author is escaping the drudgery of having to write the dreaded manual. It is fascinating then that words become his escape for words, bringing to mind the idea that poetry somehow seeks to escape language’s limitations through language itself. The writer is working “under the press” of the manual; his efforts at seeing Guadalajara are an escape from the reality situation. The reader is drawn into the poem through Ashbery’s amazing use of detail and taken for a tour of the city. The narrator introduces characters, invents little intrigues between them, and shows the reader all the best vistas. Towards the end he states, “How limited, but how complete withal, has been our experience of Guadalajara.” Although entirely fictitious, the reader gets the sense that she/he has experienced the city more deeply than an actual visit could afford. The author, through his imagination, has painted a picture more lasting than any memory. Language, in this case, has the power to represent imagination rather than the reality of the instruction manual.

Ashbery again shows himself to be concerned with language’s ability to communicate meaning in his poem “Paradoxes and Oxymorons.” He writes, “Look at it talking to you” and suddenly the poem has a life of its own. This poem is trying to communicate with the reader but is frustrated: “You miss each other.” No matter how “plain” a “level” the poem speaks on you can not know what the author is really thinking and feeling. The poem can not be understood because it is working within a “system of them.” These words can only be read in relation to all other words. Meaning is created by the reader. There is no master signifier, the poem is “without proof, open ended.” Things are only connected by and, and, and. This poem is trying to get somewhere, to say something that can not be said. Everything is constantly changing, and writing or observing simply causes more change. The “you,” the reader of the poem exists only to “tease” the writer into writing and then vanishes or changes his/her attitude. By reading this poem the poem is changed. And yet at the end of the poem, somehow, throughout all these changes and frustrations the author is set down beside the reader. The means by which the author has attempted to address his subject has become that subject. As in “The Instruction Manual,” poetry is able to use language to overcome the limitations of language through the transformative power of the imagination.