Language In Ashbery's Poems

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Ashbery implements allusion to refer to the random, ever-changing condition of the universe through carefully selected phrases and words, so that the audience can better understand the theme of the poem. Because the author refers to this complex subject in an oblique fashion, it is up to the readers to make their own connection to what exactly being mentioned, and to do so freely with their agency. At the end of line 22, the narrator says, “Something / Ought to be written about how this affects / You when you write poetry:” (Ut Pictura Poesis, 22). This sounds something like, the consequence the wandering mind has on the composition of a poem-painting encourages the reader to use that conscious ambiguity to begin to bridge an arch of understanding. When communication is expressed and you can filter out the unnecessary tidbits of the stream of consciousness, understanding can then be undone, reexamined, and questioned. Because is an artist’s or author’s work really ever done? …show more content…
The function it serves is the creation of emotions and imagery for the reader. Line 25 starts with, “The extreme austerity of an almost empty mind / Colliding with the lush, / Rousseau-like foliage of its desire to communicate” (Ut Pictura Poesis, 25-27) which without further examination might mean that the severity of an empty mind (perhaps a writer’s block?), is messy like scattered leaves in its desire to communicate. After further research, I learned that Jacques Rousseau was a noted French philosopher and painter of decorative landscapes and classic ruins. “His outstanding achievement as an artist was the creation of a new poetry of the private life, a way of expressing the moods, feelings, inchoate thoughts, memories, nostalgias and dreams of that universe which the individual is for himself.” (Scott, 271). This quote also describes Ashbery’s poetry to the

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