[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 380 KB, 625x833, enhanced-buzz-1452-1363327022-10.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3658777 No.3658777[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

A confession: I do not "get" John Ashbery. I
mean honestly, his "stanzas" -if that is indeed
what they are- just look like enjambed
paragraphs of prose, and the going on about
painters... this guy has admitted he's more
influenced by painters than poets; how can
you trust him? And the comparison to T.S.
Eliot -another noted tryhard. Ugh.

But seriously though, what am I not getting?

>pic unrelated

>> No.3658859

>>3658777
>what am I not getting

you're not getting that poetry is a failed art form and irrelevant in terms of expressive capability and cultural substance

the only people, save the very small hand full of competent poets (like half a dozen in the whole of human history at most), drawn to poetry are so because they are intellectually lazy and think poetry's reputation as 'the super elite word art' and its tendency to obscure meaning will mask the fact that they have nothing to say and tend to say it very poorly

why go on torturing yourself with this garbage, pick up a nice novel or go see a play instead

>> No.3658918
File: 305 KB, 561x431, 980709871.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3658918

>I do not "get" John Ashbery.
yeah me neither. i've read a good deal of him too. nothing ever clicked. the imagery isn't very inspired on its own and doesn't seem to amount to anything, and the lines aren't musical or atonal in the slightest. it's not even antiart. he's well received but who knows.

>he's more influenced by painters than poets; how can you trust him?
kandinsky was influenced by shoenberg. overlap of mediums and areas are generally a good thing. cp snow talks about poets using scientific language when scientism was the new thing, and maybe that's kind of what ashbery is doing but with pop culture and artspeak. i'd like to see more of that used in a different way.

>>3658859
there is no reason to be upset.

>> No.3659032
File: 314 KB, 1280x960, 471729_10150629273826087_502881086_9717097_1800448729_o.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3659032

>>3658918
I understand you can have inter-media influence, but after a certain point I feel like all his stuff is just ekphrasis.

>>3658859
>why go on torturing yourself with this garbage

A pretty wide consensus has it that it has some worth. "Well-received," as the other poster put it, is in fact putting it quite lightly. I was thinking of writing my next paper on Ashbery and Anne Carson, but yeah I am struggling a bit with him.

Carson is a bit more readable and I enjoy her stuff a lot more, but she has a similar impenetrability about her as well; I can't tell whether the poem's too smart for me or I'm too smart for the poem.

>> No.3659065

>>3659032
you don't think there's value in ekphrasis?

>> No.3659120

>>3659065
There certainly is, but it's all this guy seems to write.

>> No.3659192

>>3659120
do you think that's all that's going on, though?

now that you say it, it's interesting to think about what you can do with ekphrasis once you do make the leap into describing reactions to reactions-as-objects. it seems like you could partially sublimate and utilize a lot of that postmodern hyperselfconsciousness that way
interesting. i'll have to revisit some of his stuff with that in mind

>> No.3659198

>>3658859
Interesting. You deride an entire art form.
Are there any articles or books on the subject of poetry as "irrelevant in terms of cultural substance"? I'm asking sincerely, I've never seen anyone hold an opinion like this one before, not even on /lit/.

>> No.3659385

ni