tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post8412292487981406879..comments2024-01-24T06:50:01.683-06:00Comments on Samizdat Blog: John Ashbery and the Lonely CrowdArchambeauhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17273511539172747550noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-17663927825118612662014-08-11T13:31:55.217-05:002014-08-11T13:31:55.217-05:00Glyn Maxwell has an interesting theory as to why a...Glyn Maxwell has an interesting theory as to why a song lyric and a poem are nothing like.Shelleyhttp://dustbowlstory.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-2123104146716170372014-07-31T18:35:12.185-05:002014-07-31T18:35:12.185-05:00In-jokes and the names of friends -- yes. And yet...In-jokes and the names of friends -- yes. And yet I don't think it was meant to be exclusive. It's just that in those early days nobody but their friends was reading them -- their books in the fifties were published in tiny little editions, often by art galleries, and it's easy to forget how limited the distribution was. I was saying the other day that the books couldn't be found off the island of Manhattan, and was corrected: they couldn't be found north of 34th Street! Of course all that changed. But in those early days Ashbery certainly didn't have any sense that his work would be read beyond a very limited circle.<br />Archambeauhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17273511539172747550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-77474106696746483952014-07-31T16:57:14.842-05:002014-07-31T16:57:14.842-05:00Formalists/New Formalists
Beats and Confessionalis...Formalists/New Formalists<br />Beats and Confessionalists<br />New York School and (possibly) the Rochester School<br /><br />You did a good job with the Formalist/New Formalist development in your recent essay. It does correspond with the first of Reisman's three. It beleves in a shared "code" and tries to prolong it even though that code has largely broken down.<br /><br />It does strike me that the NYS began with a lot of in-jokes among an extended circle of poet/friends and then passed into the common knowledge that biographies and literary histories provide.<br /><br />Confessionalism began with "the subjects that must not be spoken of" but since there are no long subjects that may not be spoken of (cf. Michael Ryan) devolved into the anecdotal family poem ("My Uncle Harold used to . . .") that is ubiquitous.<br />The Rochester-style experimentalism seems trapped in a Zurick-based time-loop. <br /><br />Ashbery, I do believe, began by writing a sort of in-group code, but many of the references are now common knowledge. Surely not many could have thoroughly understood Frank O'Hara 50 years ago. I do think that an Ashbery poem like "The Other Tradition" may be some kind of oblique allegory about gay life, but not others. He resists the allegorical as resolutely as he resists the confessional. He has achieved the status of being totally impersonal and totally personal at the same time.R S Gwynnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04892623903716767609noreply@blogger.com