nowadays, nothing really is unfashionable, though i think it should be said that a preponderance of our densest poetry relies on allusion and reference to cause its sinking feeling. [as readers] we've learned to hook on to words and phrases as our portals to intention, so what can we do with the naif who still insists on navigating with code and trope (which is to insist on originality, tropes being the bases of myths, and myths being the shibboleths of educations)? they are the basic remove from the vogelschreien that all our prettiest poets were once obsessed with imitating. ashbery is one such poet, building a referendum of birdcalls that have given up their sources, though he is decidedly diatonous, a song machine.one answer is, to be the minor ashbery, meeting him halfway. pastiches with purpose. the difference here is human error, which ashbery has every-one believing he's somehow circumnavigated (that is the implicit claim that his detractors and augmentors routinely make). these qualified imitators are the preponderance of allusionists that have cut their own umbilical cords. it's a deadend, it seems to me. there's nowhere to go for the orpheus who is terrified of looking back. he can only sing the old songs, insisting on progress. he's cursed, haunted, by the thought of substance immemorial. when he finally gets torn to pieces, his head will spin in the current. and ashbery is a puny river to drown in, though time will be the better judge of that than i.
the poetry that insists on being read through is hermeneutic, wants to be known in toto. for the poet, this amounts to authority, remaking the self that is lost to time, a record of a second self suggested by the genius of the first. we should make our most fathoming thoughts mnemonic, and keep them to ourselves even as we commit them to paper and publishment. the reader, likewise, finds in the otherastext the possibility of a self.
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