A Worldly Country: New Poems

i offer merely a rough guideline from john ashbery's poetic blueprint. (for further instructions turn to ashbery's poem `so, yes'.) ashbery reminiscences a scant nod toward reflection, as in his poem, `litanies', with: `objects too are important.' well: `some of the time they are.' and then we get the report in, `autumn tea leaves': `all across europe a partial eclipse is checking in: unsudden surprise and it's sister, weary impatience, mark the flow once the sluices have been opened a little.' and the important objects appear in the form of those sluices through which `she came through smiling...' to perishable and consumed objects: `the cakes that were served-- is there a record of those? or leaves collected in the hollow of a stump ... or a small sail breasting the apparent tide, on and out of the forever harbor, just this once?' and, in `singalong', upon arrival a survey of stock of durable objects, and a final reflection and rest before the settlers set to work: `it has to be hard to have brought us this far. any time soon we'll manage to build barns, paint, lock the padlocks, waive anything dire. that way, we think, it will keep that way, we think, it will keep for us and for a while. other than that we sleep, nod like reeds at the edge of a pond. those places left unplanted will be cultivated by another, by others.' another, before ashbery, was john berryman and his `homage to mistress bradstreet'.

A Worldly Country, John Ashbery's new book of poems is rich with descriptive images which take the reader into unfamiliar territory in familiar surroundings. True to form, the language Ashbery employs is complex, and delicious, luring the reader in and caressing their intellect. Ashbery interlaces his humor and wit into a conversational tone that keeps the reader coming back for more. Ashbery opens his collection with A Worldly Country, the title poem which is lyrical and rhythmic, and takes us into wartime and peace, chaos and calm. We get the sense of the chaos and turmoil near the middle of the poem: Leftover bonbons were thrown to the chickens/And geese who squawked like the very dickens./There was no peace in the bathroom, none in the china closet/Or the banks, where no one came to make a deposit./In short all hell broke loose that wide afternoon. By the end of the poem there is a sense of calm, and profound mortality: One minute we were up to our necks in rebelliousness,/And the next, peace had subdued the ranks of hellishness. Ashbery is known for his quest to stump the critics with the meaning behind his poetry, and the difficulty readers have interpreting some of his poems. His quest is clearly continued in this new collection. Although he (Ashbery) asserts that his poetry is about the difficulty of ones own thinking and coming to ones own conclusion, he also believes his poems to be accessible, for those who care to access them. Although there are one or two poems which are fairly comprehensible, such as The Black Prince which refers to prince Edward, most of the pieces in A Worldly Country could be likened to drinking a cup of spiked punch; the words are familiar, yet once you ingest them, they become strange and intoxicating, sending your head spinning, and your mind into a sotted stupor. Mottled Tuesday is one such experience. We drink in the familiar words of lines such as; Amorous ghosts will pursue us/for a time, but sometimes they get, you know, confused and /forget to stop when we do, as they continue to populate this/fertile land with their own bizarre self-imaginings. Yet when we roll the words around in our mouth, it dizzies our minds trying to come to some sort of universal significance. This complexity does not dissuade or discourage the reader, but rather encourages them to forge forward, making it a personal quest to uncover a meaning, some meaning, THE meaning to the latest works of art created by one of the best American contemporary poets.

As a longtime admirer of John Ashbery's poetry, I am happy to say that in his latest collection, A Worldly Country, written in his seventies, he still has his poetry chops. The poems are characterized by the skillful use of language, striking connections, and surprising shifts in tone that are present in his earlier work. There may be more of a melancholy undertone in these poems, but maybe not. Ashbery continues to delight.