II. QUESTIONING
My questioning and admiring gaze expands to magnificent outposts.
—John Ashbery, "Evening in the Country"
John Ashbery’s poetry is often referred to as being enigmatic, hard to infer meaning from, where "the truth is concealed, rather than revealed" (Susan Schultz:Impossible Music). This certainly seems to hold true if we read his poetry in a conventional way. however other, alternative ways of reading texts might get us closer to the subject of Ashbery’s poetry. Instead of looking for statements, searching for answers to the questions he poses, it might be more useful to look at the kind of questions he asks. The present very brief and fragmented study deals with two of his more recent poems, At North Farm and Evening in the Country. The brief analysis does not try to offer full interpretation of the poems selected; instead it focuses on the questions explicitly and implicitly formulated by the poet.
At North FarmSomewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.
But will he know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,
Give you the thing he has for you?
Hardly anything grows here,
Yet the granaries are bursting with meal,
The sacks of meal piled to the rafters.
The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish;
Birds darken sky. Is it enough
That the dish of milk is set out at nigh,
That we think of him sometimes,
Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?
The two verses of the above poem are structured in the form of two questions. To one of the question of "what is the content of the questions" we can find the answer in the wording and the imagery of the poem, that draw in cosmic pictures and biblical imagery to describe our somewhat mystical yet shared experience, somewhere, someone, sometimes.
Who are the addressees of the questions? Both questions are addressed to the second person you; the first one asking about where to find you, recognize you, give you? Find, recognize and give are the only definite notions in the poem that we have access to. Yet there is a great deal of uncertainty if this omnipotent he will actually be able to do all this.
The notion of uncertainty continues in the second verse of the poem. It looks as if everything he does, or does not do is to be questioned, the same way as everything we do, or do not do is questioned. Yet,as we move into the second set of questions we find that the answer is contained by the question that is formualted in a rhetorically structured way. The strongly emphatical beginning Is it enough implying that it is not. It is not enough that we think of him sometimes, sometimes and always, with mixed feelings. It is precisely the notion of mixed, that encapsulates the often oppositional feelings of care/neglect, appreciation/disdain etc., that bring us closer to the meaning of the word. Thus the dramatically structures ending of the poem pulls in previous statements and condenses the multiplicity of voices expressed by the notion of this mixture.
Evening in the Country
I am still completely happy.
My resolve to win further I have
Thrown out, and am charged by the thrill
Of the sun coming up. Birds and trees, houses,
These are but the stations for the new sign of being
In me that is to close late, long
After the sun has set and darkness come
To the surrounding fields and hills.
But if breath could kill, then there would not be
Such an easy time of it, with men locked back there
In the smokestacks and corruption of the city.
Now as my questioning but admiring gaze expands
To magnificent outposts, I am not so much at home
With these memorabilia of vision as on a tour
Of my remotest properties, and the eidolon
Sinks into the effective "being" of each thing,
Stump or shrub, and they carry me inside
On motionless explorations of how dense a thing can be,
How light, and these are finished before they have begun
Leaving me refreshed and somehow younger.
Night has deployed rather awesome forces
Against this state of affairs: ten thousand helmeted footsoldiers,
A Spanish armada stretching to the horizon, all
Absolutely motionless until the hour to strike
But I think there is not too much to be said or be done
And that these things eventually take care of themselves
With rest and fresh air and the outdoors, and a good view of things.
So we might pass over this to the real
Subject of our concern, and that is
Have you begun to be in the context you feel
Now that the danger has been removed?
Light falls on your shoulders, as is its way,
And the process of purification continues happily,
Unimpeded, but has the motion started
That is to quiver your head, send anxious beams
Into the dusty corners of the rooms
Eventually shoot out over the landscape
In stars and bursts?
For other than this we know nothing
And space is a coffin, and the sky will put out the light.
I see you eager in your wishing it the way
We may join it, if it passes close enough:
This sets the seal of distinction on the success or failure of your attempt.
There is growing in that knowledge
We may perhaps remain here, cautious yet free
On the edge, as it rolls its unblinking chariot
Into the vast open, the incredible violence and yielding
Turmoil that is to be our route.
The imagery of the poem centers on the two contrasting worlds of peace and destruction. A series of idyllic images of nature unfold as the poetic persona’s questioning but admiring gaze expands. However the more or less fixed images become unstable and with a shift that is almost impossible to pin down we enter a world of dialogic imagination, where on the one hand birds, trees and houses offer familiar points of identification, in order to be replaced by the voice of warship, battle and fight.
The two fully articulated questions following one another are strategically placed at the closing third of the poem. The first one reflects on the element of peace, after the danger has been removed. The second one connects through the human body (shoulders, head) to its surroundings (room, landscape) finally bursting in stars.
The closing lines of the poem reformulate and extend the cosmic image of destruction in a polyphony of voices where you, we and I are entered in an endless discourse with one another about their common fate in uncertainty. Meanwhile the other, it, unites them in their struggle, surrounded by violence and turmoil. The poetic self that is going through the purifying experience of destruction and peace, eventually manages to hold on to its own integrity by the means of dissolving into nature and that of the others surrounding him.