Notes on John Ashbery’s “And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name”

You can’t say it that way any more.
Bothered about beauty you have to
Come out into the open, into a clearing,
And rest. Certainly whatever funny happens to you
Is OK. To demand more than this would be strange
Of you, you who have so many lovers,
People who look up to you and are willing
To do things for you, but you think
It’s not right, that if they really knew you . . .
So much for self-analysis. Now,
About what to put in your poem-painting:
Flowers are always nice, particularly delphinium.
Names of boys you once knew and their sleds,
Skyrockets are good—do they still exist?
There are a lot of other things of the same quality
As those I’ve mentioned. Now one must
Find a few important words, and a lot of low-keyed,
Dull-sounding ones. She approached me
About buying her desk. Suddenly the street was
Bananas and the clangor of Japanese instruments.
Humdrum testaments were scattered around. His head
Locked into mine. We were a seesaw. Something
Ought to be written about how this affects
You when you write poetry:
The extreme austerity of an almost empty mind
Colliding with the lush, Rousseau-like foliage of its desire to communicate
Something between breaths, if only for the sake
Of others and their desire to understand you and desert you
For other centers of communication, so that understanding
May begin, and in doing so be undone.

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[ Poetry Foundation ]
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My experience thus far has been curtains pulled up every other line.

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I'm taking *murmuration with me too now, thanks! I heard starlings could gather over a town to the point of being pests so murmuration seems like a town possessed by gossip. I once thought MacLeish was being clever, maybe even sly with "A poem should not mean / But be." When you factor in that negation such as that which our friend saw then it might as well go "A poem should not mean / But be mean."

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That seems to be a self-referential song with lots to say about rhymes and meaning, and as for this poem, "Ut Pictura Poesis" is not a very ordinary girl or name. Meanwhile, it's fun to put "Closer to her than to me" and "hearts that never played in tune" on the same page as "His head / Locked into mine."

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It's great to see you here (and I found her too). "Dangerous Moonlight" had a title that was taken from a song (or a film with a song?), so I suppose it's something he could have done for this poem as well. Putting Horace and Bread together, that kind of thing's just wow for me, though I suppose high brows would like to keep JA "literary". But that's just it, he's expanding what "literary" or "poetic" could be. Latin's the classic source, a dead language in the sense that no one's born into it, but it's renewed here, even if only to say that it can't be said that way anymore. That's what I think about the Latin, though I'm certain there's more to be said about this particular sampling, esp it's place in the title, the place where you'd easily (conveniently?) find a female name (as in the poems of Jonson and Poe and even in Williams, in a lot of songs, perhaps excepting "A Boy Named Sue").

"As those I’ve mentioned. Now one must / Find a few important words, and a lot of low-keyed, / Dull-sounding ones. She approached me" comes across to us as pointers for a new (or renewable, renewing) poetic diction, but JA might as well be talking about sources. This poem could be a lyric equivalent of his keeping Zeus and Popeye together in one rambunctious sestina.

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Dolphins are associated with Dionysos (Apollo's aesthetic opposite, if we trust Nietzsche). I looked up delphinium images (will probably never see one "face-to-face") and saw that they were very skyrocket-like.

"Personified," maybe, an embodiment... muse?

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Or that poetry should bypass usual logic for a logic all its own? Of your take on hinges, I'm most drawn to "two media of expression". In this poem, there's an opening to more media ("or other centers of communication, so that understanding") as if JA anticipates that the reader's off to other "lovers" after the poem, maybe trying to "catch" (in painting: "capture") the reader in the act of leaving a poem behind.

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I'd look for hinges under the seesaw, and by implication, between the locked heads (of reader and poet? of poet and artist? poet and poet?). There might be one in the sled too, but I'm not sure. Or between boy and sled? Kane and Rosebud? If hinges are how one thought connects to the next in this poem or in Ashbery in general, then I'm all for that picture (and many other pictures besides).

Or "hinges" could very well be one of those low-key words that we'd been asked to look for. Now I'm looking for hinges everywhere, even along the spines of those testaments.

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TAKING FIVES: Fragmentary record of attempts to own "Chronic Meanings"

Read or listen to Bob Perelman's "Chronic Meanings," a poem of 25 quatrains. You might also wish to read here or here for some notes regarding the process.


GE— I'll take "Structure announces structure and takes" off Perelman's poem because of it's metapoetic value (not only for this particular poem, or of his own poetics, but perhaps for all poetry read and written). This line also shows me a body invaded by disease, the immune system overrun, deceived to feed on itself. And that amazing word "takes" that that keeps, that saves, takes away, takes us nowhere, takes us so many places (as this poem does, and life) only to arrive at the period. Would you share your choice?

AN— "Then, having become superfluous, time." Yes indeed. Time, and therefore words. I wonder if he cut this off from somewhere? Nevertheless its perfect (to me) the way it is, placed where it is, after that cutting description of AIDS (and poetry, language) as "Symbiosis of home and prison."

for Lee Hickman

AN— "Rock or ages, a modern." Seems to refer to this poem, the addressee, as well as the "modern" disease, and the "modern" ways of detecting it (and maybe as well: the modern inability to cure it) that makes writing a pre-elegy possible

GE— that's so many ways of reading that rock! all of wc fits, i think. thanks, anon. "symbiosis" still has a sense of "life" in there, in fact at least two lives. it's like the poem itself as an act of preservation

AN— "The sky if anything grew." A longing for the comforts of the myths? Eternal life as well as judgment?

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AN— "dumb/ as old medallions to the thumb" all that's left. if i had a line, that "stopped me cold" it's "Economics was not my strong." I mean, what?! Economics, now, really? And then I thought of the metapoetry, economy of the line so forth. The condensery. But also the budgeting of time that goes into the meditation of mortality. And how it's hard to find strength in that. In the counting of breaths.

GE— i think (and maybe im just over thinking it) that the toaster can be a metaphor for what's going to happen to him: here we have a man living his life, doing his job, and trying to maintain his sanity in this world and then pop, (or is it Ding) here's the news that he'll die of aids. i find the directness of it to be honest and so perfect.

AN— that "ding" or "pop" sounds like the period at the end of the line!

GE— had not thought of that, anon, but it makes sense. silent, almost absent pop, but one that's omnipresent nonetheless

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AN— The 1st line you chose reminded me of Neruda's line in Preguntas which goes: "Is there anything sadder in the world than a train standing in the rain?"

AN— thought too about neruda's train. here it's even more absent, maybe sadder. Milton promises an after-life (very prosaic way of going at it, sorry) but that could be a sort of cruelty, esp with such a turmoil/grand war that the afterlife is painted to be

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AN— in your US sitcoms, "i had better" has a special connotation. esp among girls. don't know if that's activated here. but yes such regret is present there, such sense of loss "no object to which urgency can be applied" doubles the loss somehow (the very act of this poem too)

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AN— this line resonates for me with "The phone is for someone."

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AN— can't even "do"... not even the word for do or whatever else is available, graspable

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AN— out of our hands. and the rest of the sentences as well are out our hands whether writer or reader or addressee.

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AN— "The lesson we can each." has the same feel for me as your first choice, "A story familiar as a." It's yes, that the lesson (or story) doesn't get told in its entirety, if there is an entirety. Or if there's a lesson, that's all the lesson there is in the world: "The lesson we can each" "A story as familiar as a." is all stories, because they all end (as in Atwood's "Happy Endings" story).

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AN— this particular Atwood story is very short. I remember reading it in two anthologies, one of which is Sudden Fiction International. Here's the link to "Happy Endings"

GE— thanks for piquing my interest (once more) with that line!will have to listen in again on perelman.

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AN— Truly! The power and creativity of a poet's intention. I liked your take on these two lines, thanks.

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GE— The cutting of each line too, maybe. Something that couldn't be helped.

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AN— nothing left in, nothing left out, nothing left.

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AN— the way you put it gets me to thinking now about the way back is totally indivisible in "In a Restless World Like This Is"

AN— "There are a number of." But a number of what, right? Options, debts, friends, ideas, projects, toys in the attic, words? Whatever it is, they're not yours anymore, they're out of your sight, the world recedes.

AN— There you have it, co-Anon. "Words" definitely. And in the following line. Only one. Only one word, one life, on you?

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AN— what pain to see these aspirations dashed, cut short

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AN— "Characters in the withering capital." Sounds like the beginning of a Russian novel,a winter serial. But it's also about characters, Hickman, Perelman, us. Also about words, AIDS in particular. With its small letters hidden from view, superfluous little terrors. Unnecessary

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GE— and maybe not enough of now either. thanks for weighing in!

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AN— we end at I. the noun, the self hanging there...

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AN— and now our own time ebbs

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