SOME TREES OUT OF A HUGE FORESTUsed Poem: "Some Trees" by John AshberyThe "Mesostomatic" Poem I got using the program:Each neighBor by spEech wereArranging yoU and I in whaT performance not merelY chance means sOmethingFilled withCanvaspuzzling ligHtAnd being there and moviNg our days suCh reticence these sEem defense.I chose option A in this assignment because the idea of being able to create as many "automatic poems" as you would like to with the aid of a computer program piqued my curiosity. I have to admit that I had to try several times to obtain a poem without errors from the selected text, but my pleasure with the final result made up for all the effort. I had great fun too!I finally selected the poem "Some Trees" by Ashbery, firstly because I was deeply impressed by its close reading and then because I thought that it was an appropriate poem to give further meaning to the concept of chance. Because in this aleatory process creating the Mesostic poem, chance has a great deal of importance, but at the same time, adding the wing words and writing the spine, you can somehow unconsciously interfere with the result.As the branches of the trees in Ashbery's poem, which arrange by chance to meet and dance together, or the lovely accidental side of any relationship, in this new reduced poem, I find a freshly and even liberating sense in the words. They become the highest reality.Trying to do a close reading of the poem, I'd say that for me it talks about meetings. Meetings in the general sense, two lovers, an artist and a new idea, a reader and a poem, a subtle and elegant courtship, any kind of meeting, of getting to know something or someone who didn't exist before. Meetings which may seem to be casual or even meaningless, but at the same time, they have a reason to be, they are performed, they exist so we (the readers, the lovers, or both!) can move forward, overcoming any formal and conventional obstacle which might be found on their way and becoming something completely different in the process.And out of all the huge forest of words, the program and I chose only some of them, so chance creates a new quality, a new interpretation for these words, there is an accidental intention which somehow gives homage to Ashbery's poem, and why not, it creates new and unadulterated beauty out of it.
His attention usually shifts with every turn of phrase, often even between modifier and modified. This trick is successful when you sense substance behind each glimpse, when the sequences, a training, don't actually seem distracted or random, although at a surface level they may seem so. Some of the first poems in here don't succeed as well. You see him address poetic molds: the sestina, the sonnet, the canzone. These can give a chaos of images continuity, although not in their classical way, which is their ingenuity here. In one poem for instance, the word "chill" varies context so insistently that it loses not only its denotative but it's more creative meanings as well; it takes on an inaccessible surface, which is nonetheless still useful in many ways, as we see by its versatility. Like this he reveals the opacity of words before your eyes. In "The Painter," you try to tease out a theoretical problem until, by the end, the key words have rung so many times in different places that, in a way, you can only listen to them. And that's the most freeing thing about his voice for me. Ultimately, if while reading you can catch some enjoyable pieces of speech, you're "getting" it. He frees you to enjoy
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It is a difficult balance Ashbery has to keep. In this book, whose poems explicitly value the worth of poetry, believing that it can give access to something in this world that would value even the mundane, it would be easy to see Ashbery condescending to his reader. He is the poet, writing a poetry that understands the world better. But Ashbery is as happy and surprised by poetry as he assumes his reader is. In that, he charms me. And all those mundane occasions that manage to give rise to the spectacular of his imagination are motive for me to take in and embrace the potential all the world has to offer.
—Kent
Strange experience reading this book. Necessary reading with poems like "The Instruction Manual," "He," the sparsened sonnets throughout:The barber at his chairClips me. He does as he goes.He clips the hairs outside the nose.Too many preparations, nose!I see the raincoat this Saturday.A building is against the sky--The result is more sky.Something gathers in painfully.and the title poem. Could only have been assembled blossoming, like a hollyhock doll. You can see Ashbery closer up to Auden and Stevens, working through them as the book progresses, or writing to their tune without his later, languid aperture at infinity. 2 stars at first, then 5 by the end. Rounding up to 4.
—Jeff
Some Trees by John Ashbery is a fascinating work of poetry. A variety of forms are represented, from sonnets to prose, and the organization of poems varies as well, some with stanzas organized into couplets, some into triplets, and still others with a variety of stanza lengths.The content of Ashbery’s poems in this work varies as well. Most of the writing is in complete sentences and thoughts, but some poems tell a coherent and fluid story while others linger in the land of interpretation. The imagery is fantastic, the majority of it coming from descriptions of nature, and his figurative language and comparisons leave the reader sometimes with a clear picture of what he is describing, and other times curious as to why he compared the things he did.Apart from the variety, there are several patterns and consistent ideas throughout the book. Ashbery often uses two or three objects, things, or words, and strings them out throughout all the stanzas of a poem. This gives his poems, even the ones with less clear stories and points, coherency and a special pull toward the reader. The prime example in this book is “Poem” (24) in which Ashbery uses the words “lamps,” “peace,” “hair,” and “sky” once in each stanza, creating an incredible continuity and interesting feel throughout the poem.
—Richard Smith
