Major Modern Poetry Killer

 

And now here comes the major modern poetry killer, John Ashbery, hailed, worshiped and emulated the world over. I knew him, reader, back at Harvard, if only slightly. The closest I came was years later, when I ran into a common friend of ours who was off to visit John in the hospital and persuaded me to tag along. I forget what Ashbery was ailing from that had bedded him, as well as what may have been said in that threesome.

More perpendicularly, he proved amiable but distant the rare times we may have crossed paths, as amiable, I imagine, as when he smilingly murdered poetry.

John Simon: Who Killed Poetry?

 

And NOW for the PUNCHLINE:

The extraordinary free-verse meditation “A Wave” (1983) is the last essai in John Ashbery’s Selected Poems of 1987. The evocative title can be read as a cannily ambiguous try-on: it immediately suggests oceanic rhythmicality, but there are also implicit intimations of the “wave-theory” of modem physics (key principle and metaphor for the “electric age”) and, at least, an implication of gestural nonchalance which Stevie Smith had contrasted to “drowning” and John Berryman acted out as farewell salute to an uncomprehending world (see above, Chapter 5). In contrast to the existential intensity of Smith’s polarisation and Berryman’s casual desperation, Ashbery’s “Wave” represents a zone of apparently relaxed, postmodern hyper-reality where experience is a constant renegotiation between a hypostasised “we” of communality and the environmental simulacra which surround and help define the contemporary human project. “A Wave” inscribes a cool, street-wise Heraclitianism where insubstantiality is almost sacralised as material being and the pragmatic present (“the ground on which a man and his wife could / Look at each other and laugh, remembering how love is to them”, 331) is all that can be constituted. Ashbery’s style represents postmodernity through a kind of linguistic mimesis of flux in its verbal fluidity, calculated vaguery and eclectic artificiality: in this it can fittingly be termed “postmodernist”.

ABSTRACT: John Ashbery’s Wave

Virtue-Signaling vs. Eco-Shaming

Which of these two strategies is more useful for educating the divisive and reactionary members of our globally diverse society? Let’s briefly examine the two approaches:

  • Virtue-signaling is effective when trying to compassionately guide the unenlightened into a more conscious and socially-aware mindset, for example: an acquaintance lets you know they voted for Trump in November; you gently remind them that they are a misogynist racist Nazi buffoon and that fascism must be resisted by our enlightened choices. You then affirm that you are proud to have voted for the female candidate, who represented diversity in a progressive and global context. This clearly and publicly shows a more compassionate and humane choice and attracts like-minded people to the Good side.

 

  • Eco-shaming is a desirable strategy when confronted by unsustainable financial collaboration on the part of environmental criminals. Imagine yourself at Whole Foods. Someone is observed about to pick out a whole-wheat vegan frozen pizza. You, however, are aware of this particular brand and the inherently unjust social practices involved in its production. Rather than rebuke or denigrate your friend, you can gently steer them toward a more humane choice by saying something like:  wow — I can’t believe they even SELL that brand here. That is a totally environmentally unsustainable pizza produced in a sweatshop. Great choice. Way to perpetuate social injustice… then scowl and walk away. This may help the would-be purchaser to reconsider and thus support a more conscious vendor. You can then feel good about having contributed in a small way toward the moral evolution of a less-developed soul.

It’s up to you which method to use depending on the situation. Be creative and see if you can come up with other compassionate ways to help move our society toward a dystopic Politically-Correct Orwellian nightmare.