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
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