The Painter
Introduction and Theme of the poem
Ashbery’s interest in painting led him to write this poem. The painter is fully representative of Ashbery’s poetry. Ashbery uses a persona to reveal his poetic urge. The Painter is the mouthpiece of Ashbery. The poet uses cinematic images in the poem to make it as dynamic and visual as possible. The poem tells us that the painter is sitting between the sea and the tall buildings. He is attempting to create something impossible but remains unsuccessful. The people in the building encourage him to write common subject. He uses his wife as subject of his painting. He does it so exquisitely but again turns to his previous subject of sea. His efforts to paint the sea automatically are not realized and he is mocked by the people in the tall buildings. The painter is crucified by his subject. His desire of innovative and futuristic art remains only a prayer and longing. He is not able to achieve the extraordinary because of the ordinary demands of the audience.
The main theme of the poem is that innovator, modern and creative artists are crucified by the traditional and conventional people. This is not the only theme because the poem is to be understood at many different levels.
Ashbery’s poems are abstract paintings in words.
Introduction John Ashbery uses painter as persona to present before us his conception of poetry. The painter like Ashbery is innovator and wants to capture the vitality of life rather than the mere surface transmit beauty of the same. The painter is the most representative of Ashbery’s poems and it is a key to understanding Ashbery both as and poet and artist. The painter breaks down the traditional and orthodox restrictions on the art laid by the classicists and wants to steal the essence of art. Ashbery is no moralist and conceives the art for its own sake. As the bird sings for its own sake, Ashbery writes in the same fashion. The poem has been composed in Sestina. A Sestina is a form of rhymed or unrhymed poem of six stanzas of six lines and a concluding triplet in which the same six words at the line-ends occur in each stanza in six different sequences, apart from the final triplet, in which each line contains two of these words, one at the middle and one at the end.
Ashbery makes a genuine effort to portray the poetic vision of an artist’s mind by concentrating on the dictum "ut pictura poesis"--"as is painting, so is poetry". Through poetry he glorifies a mere painter’s struggle to find his true artistic form and inclination towards a specific way of being creative in "The Painter".
“For some people the fear of inner torment is such that the desire to create has to be repressed: ‘He does not embark on any serious pursuits commensurate with his gifts lest he fails to be a brilliant success. He would like to write or paint but does not dare to start’ (Horney 107). Or if the desire to create is not repressed, the creative process will be wracked with anxiety or hampered by self torment.” This quote from the book Therapeutic dimensions of autobiography in creative writing by Celia Hunt aptly captures to some extent the condition the painter in the poem goes through, who seems confused on whether to draw the painting of the sea or not. And how this feat of capturing the sea can be achieved.
A similar theme is also tackled by the great American poet, Emily Dickinson. In her short poem she writes: “Artists wrestle here! /Lo, a tint Cashmere! /Lo, a Rose! /Student of the Year! /For the easel here/Say Repose!” This poem lays bare the fact that the artist always juggles with his tools and crafts in order to create what he wants. For him to relax is unthinkable likewise the painter in the poem faces a lot of troubles in making this special piece of art (the sea). The painter seems to self actualize himself by materializing the urge to paint a portrait of the sea which will give the chaos of his creative world a poetic and appeasing feeling.
Ashbery is known for his surrealist poetry and in "The Painter he uses his skill to masterfully create connections between varied images. Using the modified form of sestina (last words of the verses are mostly changed) he is able to make these images jump into a creative hotchpotch. But the irony of the poem is that the artist portrayed in the poem seems to go through a rough patch in his life yet the creativity by which the poet himself writes, speaks volume of about the work of art he produces; the poet is able to create with the painter in the poem a smooth imagery of an artist’s struggle towards his creative independence--a mere human’s effort to fight for what he deems right. In order to fulfill his creative vision he goes against all the odds set by the society. Ashbery was himself a painter and his surrealist automatic writing in the poem seems to give power to the automatic drawing the painter is trying to achieve in the poem, as the artist wishes: “he expected his subject / To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush, / Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.
Interpretation of this poem is complicated. On the surface level one can judge what is happening but on a deeper level the reader may not be able to interpret the unfathomable depth. One reason quite evident is the surrealism employed. Just like the artist’s mind the poem is also free of conscious control. It takes on its own route and it paints with its own brush strokes with the artist’s creative vision.
Ashbery takes into account many aspects of syntax and rhyme in his poetry and one of it is the repetition of words. The reader may not notice immediately about it but after a careful examination it comes to light that, Ashbery repeats the word "canvas", "buildings", "brush", "subject", "prayer" seven times and "portrait" eight times in the poem. This repetition creates a surrealistic effect in the poem.
The painter in the poem is on the beach and contemplates his tempestuous subject. Sea here symbolizes the freedom, the chaos, the harmony of the waves and the creative space for the painter. The sea symbolizes freedom as it liberates the painter from the hustle bustle of the city life behind him (“the building”). The painter is like a child imagining a prayer. His innocent imagination muses over what to draw on his canvas. Though the painter loves to paint the sea but he is confused by the daunting question of how to draw and live in one’s own creative vision, how to capture the universe around us. Even though he has brush in his hand but his canvas seems empty, this paint-less canvas brings out the fact that the painter himself has lost his creative vision, or he is going through the phase of imagination blockage and he is unable to take a plunge into mind's eye where haphazard brushes could be waved like a magic wand and a beauty of its own kind would emerge into a classic piece of art. His lack of strength to take on a decision leads the people around him to take control of his mind. They ask him to make a portrait of “Something less angry and large”, that is to say; do not draw the sea due to its turbulent nature and gargantuan effect which is unfathomable by human mind to capture. The painter seemed unable to convey “his prayer” to the people that he wants “nature, not art, [to] usurp the canvas”.
The skillful painter then tries to paint his wife. He does that without really making a creative endeavour because she seemed a ruined building in the first place that is not something he would want to paint. He does make an attempt, though unwillingly. It is throttling to the painter as an artist is a free will creature and no matter what happens he has to go to his roots of desire that is he has to be a creative by not conforming to traditionalists. He has to fulfill his urge to create his own tradition. His desire to go back to the sea appears to be the only right thing to do.
"Imagine the painter crucified by his subject." signifies a powerful figure that could draw faultlessly the things he see, and be astonished and spiritualized by the creative vision he has with the drawing. The painter in the poem proves his creative vision and creative authority when “He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings”; suggesting their eagerness to stick to the roots; the traditional way of painting. The poet clearly implies that the traditional painters are bent towards following an authority by which they could judge the painter and his work.
The people, the critics and the painters of traditional sort did not appreciate the effort of the painter and thus life’s way of taking the unconventional approach irrationally by not getting accepted by his own people fell upon the painter as they threw the portrait of the sea from the tallest building. This "portrait" symbolizes something that the people, the critics and the painters of his age were not able to handle the pressure posit on them by the painter or his creative vision of the sea. Such non-conformist and cavalier attitude is also visible in Ashbery’s life, as he nonchalantly says that his goal is "to produce a poem that the critic cannot even talk about.”
In the end of the poem “the sea devoured the canvas and the brush”. It signifies that the portrait drawn by a mere artist cannot be fathomed by man himself because chaos of the sea is unfathomable and it was as if “his subject had decided to remain a prayer”. Thus the freedom and turbulence the sea entails with it consumes man’s creation as well. The chaos of the world cannot be painted in a canvas, at least people around them would not let the painter do that, yet his creative drive would urge him to create what he instinctively desires. Neither the painter would stop nor would the chaos around him end. The cycle of life would go on like this.
The main theme of the poem is that innovator, modern and creative artists are crucified by the traditional and conventional people. This is not the only theme because the poem is to be understood at many different levels.
Ashbery’s poems are abstract paintings in words.
Introduction John Ashbery uses painter as persona to present before us his conception of poetry. The painter like Ashbery is innovator and wants to capture the vitality of life rather than the mere surface transmit beauty of the same. The painter is the most representative of Ashbery’s poems and it is a key to understanding Ashbery both as and poet and artist. The painter breaks down the traditional and orthodox restrictions on the art laid by the classicists and wants to steal the essence of art. Ashbery is no moralist and conceives the art for its own sake. As the bird sings for its own sake, Ashbery writes in the same fashion. The poem has been composed in Sestina. A Sestina is a form of rhymed or unrhymed poem of six stanzas of six lines and a concluding triplet in which the same six words at the line-ends occur in each stanza in six different sequences, apart from the final triplet, in which each line contains two of these words, one at the middle and one at the end.
Ashbery makes a genuine effort to portray the poetic vision of an artist’s mind by concentrating on the dictum "ut pictura poesis"--"as is painting, so is poetry". Through poetry he glorifies a mere painter’s struggle to find his true artistic form and inclination towards a specific way of being creative in "The Painter".
“For some people the fear of inner torment is such that the desire to create has to be repressed: ‘He does not embark on any serious pursuits commensurate with his gifts lest he fails to be a brilliant success. He would like to write or paint but does not dare to start’ (Horney 107). Or if the desire to create is not repressed, the creative process will be wracked with anxiety or hampered by self torment.” This quote from the book Therapeutic dimensions of autobiography in creative writing by Celia Hunt aptly captures to some extent the condition the painter in the poem goes through, who seems confused on whether to draw the painting of the sea or not. And how this feat of capturing the sea can be achieved.
A similar theme is also tackled by the great American poet, Emily Dickinson. In her short poem she writes: “Artists wrestle here! /Lo, a tint Cashmere! /Lo, a Rose! /Student of the Year! /For the easel here/Say Repose!” This poem lays bare the fact that the artist always juggles with his tools and crafts in order to create what he wants. For him to relax is unthinkable likewise the painter in the poem faces a lot of troubles in making this special piece of art (the sea). The painter seems to self actualize himself by materializing the urge to paint a portrait of the sea which will give the chaos of his creative world a poetic and appeasing feeling.
Ashbery is known for his surrealist poetry and in "The Painter he uses his skill to masterfully create connections between varied images. Using the modified form of sestina (last words of the verses are mostly changed) he is able to make these images jump into a creative hotchpotch. But the irony of the poem is that the artist portrayed in the poem seems to go through a rough patch in his life yet the creativity by which the poet himself writes, speaks volume of about the work of art he produces; the poet is able to create with the painter in the poem a smooth imagery of an artist’s struggle towards his creative independence--a mere human’s effort to fight for what he deems right. In order to fulfill his creative vision he goes against all the odds set by the society. Ashbery was himself a painter and his surrealist automatic writing in the poem seems to give power to the automatic drawing the painter is trying to achieve in the poem, as the artist wishes: “he expected his subject / To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush, / Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.
Interpretation of this poem is complicated. On the surface level one can judge what is happening but on a deeper level the reader may not be able to interpret the unfathomable depth. One reason quite evident is the surrealism employed. Just like the artist’s mind the poem is also free of conscious control. It takes on its own route and it paints with its own brush strokes with the artist’s creative vision.
Ashbery takes into account many aspects of syntax and rhyme in his poetry and one of it is the repetition of words. The reader may not notice immediately about it but after a careful examination it comes to light that, Ashbery repeats the word "canvas", "buildings", "brush", "subject", "prayer" seven times and "portrait" eight times in the poem. This repetition creates a surrealistic effect in the poem.
The painter in the poem is on the beach and contemplates his tempestuous subject. Sea here symbolizes the freedom, the chaos, the harmony of the waves and the creative space for the painter. The sea symbolizes freedom as it liberates the painter from the hustle bustle of the city life behind him (“the building”). The painter is like a child imagining a prayer. His innocent imagination muses over what to draw on his canvas. Though the painter loves to paint the sea but he is confused by the daunting question of how to draw and live in one’s own creative vision, how to capture the universe around us. Even though he has brush in his hand but his canvas seems empty, this paint-less canvas brings out the fact that the painter himself has lost his creative vision, or he is going through the phase of imagination blockage and he is unable to take a plunge into mind's eye where haphazard brushes could be waved like a magic wand and a beauty of its own kind would emerge into a classic piece of art. His lack of strength to take on a decision leads the people around him to take control of his mind. They ask him to make a portrait of “Something less angry and large”, that is to say; do not draw the sea due to its turbulent nature and gargantuan effect which is unfathomable by human mind to capture. The painter seemed unable to convey “his prayer” to the people that he wants “nature, not art, [to] usurp the canvas”.
The skillful painter then tries to paint his wife. He does that without really making a creative endeavour because she seemed a ruined building in the first place that is not something he would want to paint. He does make an attempt, though unwillingly. It is throttling to the painter as an artist is a free will creature and no matter what happens he has to go to his roots of desire that is he has to be a creative by not conforming to traditionalists. He has to fulfill his urge to create his own tradition. His desire to go back to the sea appears to be the only right thing to do.
"Imagine the painter crucified by his subject." signifies a powerful figure that could draw faultlessly the things he see, and be astonished and spiritualized by the creative vision he has with the drawing. The painter in the poem proves his creative vision and creative authority when “He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings”; suggesting their eagerness to stick to the roots; the traditional way of painting. The poet clearly implies that the traditional painters are bent towards following an authority by which they could judge the painter and his work.
The people, the critics and the painters of traditional sort did not appreciate the effort of the painter and thus life’s way of taking the unconventional approach irrationally by not getting accepted by his own people fell upon the painter as they threw the portrait of the sea from the tallest building. This "portrait" symbolizes something that the people, the critics and the painters of his age were not able to handle the pressure posit on them by the painter or his creative vision of the sea. Such non-conformist and cavalier attitude is also visible in Ashbery’s life, as he nonchalantly says that his goal is "to produce a poem that the critic cannot even talk about.”
In the end of the poem “the sea devoured the canvas and the brush”. It signifies that the portrait drawn by a mere artist cannot be fathomed by man himself because chaos of the sea is unfathomable and it was as if “his subject had decided to remain a prayer”. Thus the freedom and turbulence the sea entails with it consumes man’s creation as well. The chaos of the world cannot be painted in a canvas, at least people around them would not let the painter do that, yet his creative drive would urge him to create what he instinctively desires. Neither the painter would stop nor would the chaos around him end. The cycle of life would go on like this.
2.Melodic Train by John Ashbery
Introduction and Main ThemeLife is a perpetual journey into the unconscious regions of human mind, which brings up a new perspective each time an activity is stirred. The poem shows the poet sitting in a train heading towards a destination. He is not alone. There is a little girl who attracts his attention but only for a short time because later the people and scenes in and around the train capture his imagination. He feels in relation to the every thing around him.
According to Ashbery, ‘Life is in motion’. We spend our time in trains, boats and buses and time is fleeting like these four wheelers. Time is precious and unique. Melodic Trains is a journey of time. We come across various destinations, fall into confusions which have repercussions on our memories. We often reach destinations, not desired by us. Melodic Trains becomes a journey of life, the faces of passengers and what all the time is goes in their minds.
The poem is a nice piece of poetry full of thought provoking ideas. It is a realistic presentation of town life. It is a fine blend of subjective and objective views. It is just a poem but has been presented before us in such cinematic approach before our eyes that we feel a part of the whole train experience physically and spiritually. The poet has taken watch, travel, pipe, taxi and destinations as the raw material for the production of the poem and conveys humdrum routine of the town dwellers in many perspectives.
A CRITIQUE OF MELODIC TRAINS
The poem shows melodically sounding related series of thoughts that are developing in your mind. They are called Melodic trains for they have the power to transform the minds of people from some ordinary experience to some particular. The poem is a fine example of stream of consciousness technique.
The poem shows the complexity of thoughts as they pass through a sensitive mind of a poet. A poetic mind has a great capacity for associating this similar and distinct thought. That is why; the poem has more than one layer of meaning. The title itself suggests the thought process growing on within the poet’s mind. The outer journey in her real train is paralleled by a symbolic train of thoughts and melodies, poetic ideas running through the mind
Melodic Trains is a poem of music and musings. It captures its metaphors and symbols from the experience of traveling by train. Ashbery compares this to the journey of life and tries to establish that common worries consume too much of our energies and leave us little time to see that others have similar problems which we can share and lessen. The corner stone of his poem is the question that occurs in the middle of the poem: “Why couldn’t/We have been more considerate?”
The title of the poem sets a tone of harmony and concord. The trains are melodic not because the round of the wheels is so rhythmic, but because Ashbery sees all passengers as his brothers. He empathises with them and feels that on our individual journey of life we must share each others’ experiences and together establish a world more in harmony with love, happiness, and brotherhood. This is possible only if everyone hears and shares the music of life. Thus all the complaints of his fellow passengers “strikes silver bells” in his heart.
The poem has the form of a reverine started by a little girl’s asking the poet what time it is the poet muses that the watch she is wearing is a toy, which she is wearing to show that she is grown up. This starts a chain of musings in which the poet thinks that the “tweed” coat and pipe he has put on establish him only as an actor playing a serious role. These clothes hardly show what kind of person is hidden inside. This helps Ashbery bring the comparison of people as “unfathomable valleys” that must be explored. They live before the background of huge mountains.
Ashbery equates the train to a “pencil guided by a ruler” to show that life seems certain and planned and the way seems “flat” and smooth against the “photomural of the Alps”. On this journey the distances between stations and those between passengers intrigue the poet. In his typical way of paradoxical statements Ashbery thinks that personal distances may be something “unofficial and impersonal” though they may sometime be correct like a stopped watch “right twice a day”.
Against this background of train journey as life, Ashbery paints the picture of wait and worry at the stations. This brings in the theme of the poem in clearer perspective. The “clouds of anxiety, of sad regretful impatience” picture the problems of life and the poet feels that the panic and disorder of the work is so little at the cost of so much unhappiness. This journey does not allow us to see the people with us and the only memory of the journey is of what we saw outside the train. The journey will end happily but people do not know that and keep pushing with dogged impatience.
This poem of music and musings is typical of Ashbery’s method of paradoxes and metaphors. His comparisons and metaphors are always based on his maxim that “Artists are no fun once they have been discovered”. The poem therefore presents several surprising metaphors. The train journey is set against the photomural of the Alps and the train is a pencil guided by a ruler. The thick white clouds of steam look like “great white apples” and seem to be wearying and world-weary. Such figures may still be easy to understand and lead to an artistic appreciation of the poem but the final description of citizen’s committee headed by the mayor hardly brings home to us if Ashbery is referring to a happy end of life or of a simple journey. We are led to agree with David Lehman writing in Beyond Amazement when he asks: “Does Ashbery’s poetry view meanings, or does it militate against the very possibility of articulating them?”
Ashbery draws his metaphors from many sources. Sometimes they are from Greek notions of perfectness of the circles as when he refers to the segment of chance in the circle of certainty. Similarly last stop means getting home, Ashbery relates this to life and the end of life but how getting home is related to the visible chorus evades us completely.
Equally ambiguous is the figure of the zipper which is related to eh earlier image of dress but how it opens the scenery is quite far fetched. The passengers’ voices have descending scales the town being nothing but a windmill and the welcome at the last stop with the furniture of the air can hardly be taken as embellishment of the poem.
The poem is quite musical as the title suggested and Ashbery’s frequent use of sonorous words adds to the music. He creates this effect of melody with assonance and consonance repeated in every line. The verse paragraphs follow one after the other like the scenes and acts of a drama reaching its natural finale. On the whole the poem is a good example of optimistic and sunny side of 20th century literature.
According to Ashbery, ‘Life is in motion’. We spend our time in trains, boats and buses and time is fleeting like these four wheelers. Time is precious and unique. Melodic Trains is a journey of time. We come across various destinations, fall into confusions which have repercussions on our memories. We often reach destinations, not desired by us. Melodic Trains becomes a journey of life, the faces of passengers and what all the time is goes in their minds.
The poem is a nice piece of poetry full of thought provoking ideas. It is a realistic presentation of town life. It is a fine blend of subjective and objective views. It is just a poem but has been presented before us in such cinematic approach before our eyes that we feel a part of the whole train experience physically and spiritually. The poet has taken watch, travel, pipe, taxi and destinations as the raw material for the production of the poem and conveys humdrum routine of the town dwellers in many perspectives.
A CRITIQUE OF MELODIC TRAINS
The poem shows melodically sounding related series of thoughts that are developing in your mind. They are called Melodic trains for they have the power to transform the minds of people from some ordinary experience to some particular. The poem is a fine example of stream of consciousness technique.
The poem shows the complexity of thoughts as they pass through a sensitive mind of a poet. A poetic mind has a great capacity for associating this similar and distinct thought. That is why; the poem has more than one layer of meaning. The title itself suggests the thought process growing on within the poet’s mind. The outer journey in her real train is paralleled by a symbolic train of thoughts and melodies, poetic ideas running through the mind
Melodic Trains is a poem of music and musings. It captures its metaphors and symbols from the experience of traveling by train. Ashbery compares this to the journey of life and tries to establish that common worries consume too much of our energies and leave us little time to see that others have similar problems which we can share and lessen. The corner stone of his poem is the question that occurs in the middle of the poem: “Why couldn’t/We have been more considerate?”
The title of the poem sets a tone of harmony and concord. The trains are melodic not because the round of the wheels is so rhythmic, but because Ashbery sees all passengers as his brothers. He empathises with them and feels that on our individual journey of life we must share each others’ experiences and together establish a world more in harmony with love, happiness, and brotherhood. This is possible only if everyone hears and shares the music of life. Thus all the complaints of his fellow passengers “strikes silver bells” in his heart.
The poem has the form of a reverine started by a little girl’s asking the poet what time it is the poet muses that the watch she is wearing is a toy, which she is wearing to show that she is grown up. This starts a chain of musings in which the poet thinks that the “tweed” coat and pipe he has put on establish him only as an actor playing a serious role. These clothes hardly show what kind of person is hidden inside. This helps Ashbery bring the comparison of people as “unfathomable valleys” that must be explored. They live before the background of huge mountains.
Ashbery equates the train to a “pencil guided by a ruler” to show that life seems certain and planned and the way seems “flat” and smooth against the “photomural of the Alps”. On this journey the distances between stations and those between passengers intrigue the poet. In his typical way of paradoxical statements Ashbery thinks that personal distances may be something “unofficial and impersonal” though they may sometime be correct like a stopped watch “right twice a day”.
Against this background of train journey as life, Ashbery paints the picture of wait and worry at the stations. This brings in the theme of the poem in clearer perspective. The “clouds of anxiety, of sad regretful impatience” picture the problems of life and the poet feels that the panic and disorder of the work is so little at the cost of so much unhappiness. This journey does not allow us to see the people with us and the only memory of the journey is of what we saw outside the train. The journey will end happily but people do not know that and keep pushing with dogged impatience.
This poem of music and musings is typical of Ashbery’s method of paradoxes and metaphors. His comparisons and metaphors are always based on his maxim that “Artists are no fun once they have been discovered”. The poem therefore presents several surprising metaphors. The train journey is set against the photomural of the Alps and the train is a pencil guided by a ruler. The thick white clouds of steam look like “great white apples” and seem to be wearying and world-weary. Such figures may still be easy to understand and lead to an artistic appreciation of the poem but the final description of citizen’s committee headed by the mayor hardly brings home to us if Ashbery is referring to a happy end of life or of a simple journey. We are led to agree with David Lehman writing in Beyond Amazement when he asks: “Does Ashbery’s poetry view meanings, or does it militate against the very possibility of articulating them?”
Ashbery draws his metaphors from many sources. Sometimes they are from Greek notions of perfectness of the circles as when he refers to the segment of chance in the circle of certainty. Similarly last stop means getting home, Ashbery relates this to life and the end of life but how getting home is related to the visible chorus evades us completely.
Equally ambiguous is the figure of the zipper which is related to eh earlier image of dress but how it opens the scenery is quite far fetched. The passengers’ voices have descending scales the town being nothing but a windmill and the welcome at the last stop with the furniture of the air can hardly be taken as embellishment of the poem.
The poem is quite musical as the title suggested and Ashbery’s frequent use of sonorous words adds to the music. He creates this effect of melody with assonance and consonance repeated in every line. The verse paragraphs follow one after the other like the scenes and acts of a drama reaching its natural finale. On the whole the poem is a good example of optimistic and sunny side of 20th century literature.
Analysis In Slide share
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