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Dec. 16th, 2008 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionI wrote about Ashbery, not for the recent long papers but in a shorter one a couple weeks ago, and specifically his expressions of ambivalence to Bloom's recent kingmaking of him in the Self-Portrait volume (kings, under Bloom, being sort of lampreys on the necks of deader kings--glowing lampreys on glowing kings who are lampreys themselves, but few get past the lamprey part). The evidence was overwhelming--I ran out of space after briefly discussing just the first four poems. All four poems involve protesting a Steinian counteraesthetic--when examined closely more like one of Shelley's--against the Miltonic-Romantic sublime, depicted as just not being worth it. Bloom himself is ambiguously presented as something of a scam artist in "Worsening Situation"--which elsewhere seems to attack Perloff, to my great satisfaction:
One day a man called while I was out
And left this message: "You got the whole thing wrong
From start to finish. Luckily, there's still time
To correct the situation, but you must act fast.
See me at your earliest convenience. And please
Tell no one of this. Much besides your life depends on it."
I thought nothing of it at the time. Lately
I´ve been looking at old-fashioned plaids, fingering
Starched white collars, wondering whether there’s a way
To get them really white again.
This is very funny but unfair. Bloom saw Ashbery as having particularly captured the voice of Stevens' "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle," giving as an example a stanza from it that didn't sound like Ashbery to me at all. I've been rereading the poem today (magnificent, lovely) and I have to say, bits of several of its other stanzas are clearly papier-mached onto his brain stem:
The mules that angels ride come slowly down
The blazing passes, from beyond the sun.
Descensions of their tinkling bells arrive.
These muleteers are dainty of their way.
Meantime, centurions guffaw and beat
Their shrilling tankards on the table-boards.
De-archaicize and demetrify it slightly and it's pretty much the arch-Ashbery moment. Bloom reigns as the sharpest--he must have noticed the attacks too. I wonder if they amused him.
All of which is very interesting in Ashbery but doesn't make me feel like I need him. Often when I read him I'm very moved, but I'm not sure the motion amounts to anything but recognizing that this is where the glow is being wasted right now. If you actually have Shelley and Stevens, which we always will, what's the great appeal? Other than helping to prove Bloom right about the poets. Does a point arrive when the lamprey spiral tapers away?
One day a man called while I was out
And left this message: "You got the whole thing wrong
From start to finish. Luckily, there's still time
To correct the situation, but you must act fast.
See me at your earliest convenience. And please
Tell no one of this. Much besides your life depends on it."
I thought nothing of it at the time. Lately
I´ve been looking at old-fashioned plaids, fingering
Starched white collars, wondering whether there’s a way
To get them really white again.
This is very funny but unfair. Bloom saw Ashbery as having particularly captured the voice of Stevens' "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle," giving as an example a stanza from it that didn't sound like Ashbery to me at all. I've been rereading the poem today (magnificent, lovely) and I have to say, bits of several of its other stanzas are clearly papier-mached onto his brain stem:
The mules that angels ride come slowly down
The blazing passes, from beyond the sun.
Descensions of their tinkling bells arrive.
These muleteers are dainty of their way.
Meantime, centurions guffaw and beat
Their shrilling tankards on the table-boards.
De-archaicize and demetrify it slightly and it's pretty much the arch-Ashbery moment. Bloom reigns as the sharpest--he must have noticed the attacks too. I wonder if they amused him.
All of which is very interesting in Ashbery but doesn't make me feel like I need him. Often when I read him I'm very moved, but I'm not sure the motion amounts to anything but recognizing that this is where the glow is being wasted right now. If you actually have Shelley and Stevens, which we always will, what's the great appeal? Other than helping to prove Bloom right about the poets. Does a point arrive when the lamprey spiral tapers away?
