A Study Of Self In John Ashbery’s Poetry

John Ashbery(1927-2017)is one of the most influential American contemporary poets.He has won nearly all major American poetry awards,including the Pulitzer Prize,the National Book Award,and the National Book Critics Circle Award.His poetry is known for its free-flowing syntax,peculiar juxtaposition,postmodern complexity and opacity.Self is one of the most difficult subjects in Ashbery’s poetry.Ashbery tries to represent a universal experience in his poetry,which is the flow of one’s consciousness rather than regarding poetry as a medium of individual self-expression.He intentionally effaces the authorial presence in his poetry and aims to create an open and universal model of literal self-expression.This thesis consists of three parts: introduction,main body and conclusion.The main body includes three chapters.Chapter One explores how avant-garde art influences Ashbery’s poetics of self and shapes his ambiguous and paradoxical self.Spontaneity is the creation concept shared by many avant-garde painters such as Surrealist and Abstract Expressionistic ones.John Ashbery embedded this concept into poetry writing.His poetry is guided by spontaneity and the poetic subject unravels and re-reveal in the motion of mind.Meanwhile,the tension between individual self and community in avant-garde concept plays a significant role in the formation of Ashbery’s poetic self.Ashbery ponders over the relation between individual self,community and society in his poetry,which serves as a clear indication of the ambiguity and paradox of self in Ashbery’s poetry.Chapter Two discusses the shift of self from subject to object in Ashbery’s poetry.Ashbery borrows the method of observation in paintings in literary representation and expression of one’s self,which is to observe the self through an external perspective.In his poetry,poetic subjects often become portrait subjects.The outside world not only helps observe and understand the self better,but also construct one’s self.Ashbery shows great interest in daily objects.He believes daily objects shape the modern people and are the representative of machinery mass production.From them,a person can understand the world he lives in better as well as his inner world.The object is a medium of connecting the past and present self because it carries emotions and memories.Chapter Three analyzes the mobile,open and depersonalized characteristics of Ashbery’s self.Individual self-expression is boring for the poet.As a result,he hopes to create a one-fit-all model of self-expression instead of considering poetry as a medium of self-expression.Ashbery’s self thus has great openness and freedom.This openness of Ashbery’s self comes from his idea about motion.In his opinion,motion is the common state of the world and the self.Ashbery’s conception of self is different from the psychological conception of self which presumes that the self exists as a unique entity.He regards the self as a unitary of spirit and material,not directly related to any particular individual.His self is a depersonalized self.This thesis interprets Ashbery’s poetry in terms of his unique poetics of self.It illustrates Ashbery’s conception of self and explores the social dimension of his poetic self,by examining the significant role of avant-garde art in shaping Ashbery’s ambiguous and fluid poetic self,discussing his experimental approach of selfrepresentation and his exploration of the relation between the spiritual and material aspects of one’s self.Ashbery’s poetic self is a response to the predicament of the avantgarde movement that is the inevitable canonization of their work.