by
Adam Talmage Monroe
Term project
English 5044
Dr. David Radcliffe
Viking Press first published John Ashbery’s Three Poems in 1972.
It is comprised of three long prose poems that total 118 pages: “The New
Spirit,” “The System” and “The Recital,” in that order. The work
has been praised by critics and poets for its innovative prose form and
fluidity of language (to name a few of its many unique and brilliant elements).
It also has been condemned as solipsistic and meaningless by others.
At any rate, Mr. Ashbery’s three prose poems continue today to stir controversy
and provoke interpretation of all kinds.
Readings of the work over the past three decades most often
attend to aesthetics or philosophy. Common themes can be found in
almost all forms of criticism of Three Poems.
The conflict between inclusiveness and exclusion has been quite
often discussed. As a rule, the prose form is inclusive in a way
that lyric poetry cannot be; i.e., lyric poetry is bound by a brevity that
does not allow for all details – it must be efficient – it must be exclusive;
prose, on the other hand, can include all the detail that the “poem” cannot
– it is free to ramble and explore avenues that poetry must never take.
Reading a piece of meandering prose as “poetry,” the reader is forced to
question the definition of a poem. So what exactly is a “prose poem”?
Is that not, by definition, an absolute contradiction in terms? This
is not a new question, by any means. From interviews with the poet
we learn that Mr. Ashbery had asked himself this question, and decided
to answer it in his own way with Three Poems.
Themes run throughout the work, cropping up here and there like
remembered images from an aimless stroll. Conflicts in love, time,
art, change – these ideas become like old friends to the reader, and can
be depended upon to attend the majority of studies on the work. Specifically,
the poet seems to have resigned himself to the impossibility of ever answering
any of these questions he has laid before the reader.
The present in Three Poems seems to exist only as an unattainable
idea, hanging eternally between the past and the future. Critics
often look to the poet’s handling of this issue, specifically to the effect
of one’s realization of this issue. The work is often read as art
about art. Often, the critic will perceive a suggestion in the work
that the only meaning to be taken from art is the art itself; here the
form becomes the meaning. Issues of solipsism – the belief that nothing
exists beyond the self – transcendence, absence of voice and the poet’s
conflict between the self and the “other” are raised.
The common thread that unites almost all criticism of Three Poems has since
its publication been, and remains today, the desire to understand the significance
of the prose form under the label of poetry. Therein lies the meaning
of the poem for many. Most criticism of the work has examined common
themes, like those mentioned above that run throughout the trilogy of poems
that comprise the book, to support a thesis that either defends or attacks
the poet’s prose.
Tracking the chronology of criticism on Three Poems presents
a picture of varying but coexistent approaches. There are the academic
essays that seek to make point after point on a blow-by-blow basis, carefully
supporting a well-defined thesis with staggering quotes from all the big
names. There are the essays that seem to imitate the form of the
object of criticism – meandering, rambling, sounding poetic in their expository
prose – a few perhaps a bit too awe-struck to remain objective in places.
Some compare the work with paintings, while others liken its principles
to theoretical philosophers. But all these approaches have been taken
simultaneously by varying critics at varying times, presenting not so much
a development as a continued debate that has spanned, after all, only 28
years.
Abbreviations are as follows:
T.P., Three Poems
N.S., “The New Spirit”
J.A., John Ashbery
Bibliography