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<\/a><\/p>\nHe was a leading figure of the New York School of poetry in the 1960s, a group influenced by modernist and contemporary art (especially abstract expressionism and surrealism). The work that emerged from this movement was wide-ranging; forms of pastiche, non-narrative and anti-narrative text, a simultaneous return to and rejection of form all problematised the discipline of poetry\u2014and in a good way. Complex new poetry for a complex new, postmodern world. An interest in contemporary culture provoked poems about the banal, every day, sometimes the throw-away. Art is life, and sometimes, life is dull. No more grand subjects and narratives, just life.<\/p>\n
This is neither an obituary nor essay; it’s a remembering of my first encounter with Ashbery, and not an easy one to recollect since his poetic work has been so prominent in the study of contemporary poetics, but I think I can pin it down to a balmy late September in a seminar room when our tutor gave us crumpled photocopies of \u201cThe Skaters\u201d (1964):<\/p>\n
These decibels
\nAre a kind of flagellation, an entity of sound
\nInto which being enters, and is apart.
\nTheir colors on a warm February day
\nMake for masses of inertia, and hips
\nProd out of the violet-seeming into a new kind
\nOf demand that stumps the absolute because not new
\nIn the sense of the next one in an infinite series
\nBut, as it were, pre-existing or pre-seeming in
\nSuch a way as to contrast funnily with the unexpectedness
\nAnd somehow push us all into perdition.<\/p>\n
The direct address, themes concerning sound and music and the rush of rich images made this early encounter with Ashbery\u2019s text a meaningful touchstone for much of my later research concerning poetry, music, sound, and the every day. I return to Ashbery again and again in reading, research and in teaching (some of our students will know well the famous \u201cPopeye\u201d sestina: \u201cFarm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape<\/a>\u201d).<\/p>\n For more information about Ashbery, explore the online collection archived at the Poetry Foundation <\/a> We wake to the sad news that one of our greatest modern poets, John Ashbery, has died aged ninety. He was a leading figure of the New York School of poetry in the 1960s, a group influenced by modernist and … Continue reading
\nTo read and listen to, in Ashbery\u2019s own voice, \u201cThe Skaters\u201d visit the archive at Penn Sound.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"