To read a John Ashbery poem is to encounter a mysterious, occasionally frustrating collection of events and emotions that can be extraordinarily compelling without necessarily making linear sense. Even if a line seems illogical-and there are many such lines in Ashbery's work-it is integral to the poem, in the way that the random thoughts each of us has on a given day make up the fabric of our existence. Did I remember to lock the door? That woman on the subway looked like my best friend from primary school. I wonder what she's doing now. What's it really like to be a policeman?
As a result of this ontological bounty, Ashbery has been categorised, during his 50 years as one of America's "famous" poets, as difficult. He does not write autobiographical or confessional poems in the usual sense. He assumes numerous personas, skipping around from "I" to "he" to "you" with abandon. When this approach works, it is whimsical and charming, delivering a great wallop of emotion by capturing what is universal in human experience while refusing to view it from a single perspective. When it doesn't, it produces poems so oblique as to be frustrating.
Your Name Here, Ashbery's 21st book of verse, contains both kinds of poems. It is more emotional than many of his previous collections, perhaps because he's reached an age that precipitates stocktaking. Still, he can't help reminding us that it's a mistake to look to poetry for answers. Even the title of his book tells us not to take him too seriously. The phrase "Your Name Here" is at once inclusive and self-effacing, the very mix that allows him to offer wisdom between the lines of even his most perplexing poems. For example, "The Water Inspector" begins: "Scramble the 'Believer' buttons. Silence the chickens. We have more important things, like intelligence." What the hell is he talking about? Right when you're ready to throw the book down, however, Ashbery banishes confusion: "We say so many cruel things in a lifetime, and yet. In a whorehouse, young, I obfuscated. Destiny was this and that, no it was about this and that. Do you see what I'm saying? Nobody needs the whole truth."
As in life, a larger revelation makes what comes before it obsolete. But just as you won't find out any more truth than you need to in life, you won't find out who Ashbery is from reading his book. There are a few signs. The book is dedicated to a former lover, and there is a mention of Ashbery's brother, who died when they were both boys; but mostly the poet tries on a crowd of personalities, playing dodge-'em with his readers. Among them is a Scandinavian man reflecting on his childhood in one of the book's most enigmatic pieces. "They Don't Just Go Away, Either" begins like a fairy tale: "In Scandinavia, where snow falls frequently/in winter, then lies around for quite some time,/lucky cousins were living in a time-vault of sorts." It continues with an image of the inevitable evolution of a life: "More fanciful patterns await us further along/in our destiny, I tell him, and he agrees; anything/to be rid of me and on to the next customer./Outside, in the street, a length of silk unspools beautifully,/ rejoicing in its doom."
It's a gorgeous moment, and there are many others here. In particular, a tiny poem, "Stanzas Before Time," epitomises Ashbery's power to make us accept his ambiguities simply by overwhelming us with his generosity:
Quietly as if it could be
otherwise, the ocean turns
and slinks back into her panties.
Reefs must know something of this,
and all the incurious red fish
that float ditsily in schools,
wondering which school is best.
I'd take you for a drive
in my flivver, Miss Ocean, honest, if I could.
Do you know what a flivver is? Probably not, but it doesn't matter, because when Ashbery writes "honest" you can tell he means it. Sure, he's not telling the whole story of his life for the world to gape at, but what he puts down is all true somehow. In this way, reading an Ashbery poem is also a little bit like being let loose inside a house of mirrors-things don't make sense on the surface, but on some gut level, you know you're still looking at yourself, which is about as much as you can hope for. As he himself writes:
We should all be so lucky as to get hit by the meteor
of an idea once in our lives. It would save a lot of hand-wringing
and bells tolling in the undersea cathedral,
a noise to drive one mad, past the brink of human decency.
Please don't tell me it all adds up in the end. I'm sick of that one.
