John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

Works of the poet in chronological order
with their corresponding abbreviation    4
Abbreviations    8
introduction    9
For Students    9
Author’s Aside, a Celebration    10

Context
Self-Portraits from Lake Ontario to Europe to 1976     13
Fun facts    36
Ashbery’s Poetry in Twentieth-Century America    39
Poetry of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s and beyond    41
Black Mountain College    42
The 1940s    43
New Criticism    45
The Beats     47
The 1950s    48
Allen’s The New American Poetry: 1945-1960    52
The New York School    53
“The Movement’’ in Britain    64
The 1960s    64
Commitments    71
American Confessional Poetry    72
Postmodernism    73
The 1970s and the San Francisco Avant-Garde    77
Vietnam    81
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetry    82
New York School: Generations 2 & 3    83

Thematical Analysis
Collage as the Ars Poetica of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror    89
The Collage Poet, or Ashbery’s Collages Revealed    89
Voice in the collages    94
How collage works in “Forties Flick’’     98
“We see it with our teeth’’ — Sightings and pathways through Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror    101
French Connections    101
American Bicentennial    103
Climate / Ecology / Ambiance    106
A Poetics of Transcendence by transcending the Tradition?    116
A Poetics of Transcendence with a meaning or a message?    117
Lux Esto    121
Self Portraits and Firsts—The Title Poem    123
The artist Parmigianino and his work    123
The Painting Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (c1523)    126
Self-Portrait as genre    127
Portraits of Ashbery    129
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror / the cover    129
The reflecting pool of Narcissus    131
A portrait for the twentieth century
and the American bicentennial?    132
The poem, in its parts    134
Intertextuality and referentiality    135
Round objects and mirrors    138
Shifting pronouns    138
Additional analysis    139
In relationship to the rest of the book and the rest of his poetry    147
From Houseboat Days to Commotion of the Birds    149
The Age of Ashbery or Ashbery for the Age?    175
Poetic Trajectories, a little portrait of J.A.
as a contemporary among the poets of his time.    175
Questions of Influence: The Poets in Ashbery’s wake    187
An honest assessment    191
Ashbery in Anthologies    192
Ashbery and his critics    195
Ashbery of the Obama era:
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood    200
The humor of Ashbery as antidote to the age of Trump?    204

Tools
Appendices        206
Appendix 1. Artists/Musicians Ashbery met and/or wrote about    206
Appendix 2. French Writers Translated by John Ashbery    211
Appendix 3. Exhibits on/about John Ashbery    213
Very Select Bibliography    214
Timeline : Ashbery in context    222

Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec has been Associate Professor of English (Maître de Conférences) at Université Caen Normandie since 2000 and has also enjoyed teaching literature at Institut Catholique de Paris (2008-16). She has been secretary to the SEM (Société d’Études Modernistes) for the past six years and vice president of the literary society Amitié Charles Péguy. She has published articles on modernist poetry, war poetry, religious poetry, and contemporary poetry. In addition, she has been involved in editing several periodical numbers and volumes of essays including: Etudes Anglaises 71.2: Reading Geoffrey Hill in 2020 (2018), European Voices in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats and Geoffrey Hill (2015), The Fallen & The Unfallen (Arts of War and Peace 1.1, 2013), Péguy Alive: 140 years and Beyond (L’amitié Charles Péguy °142, 2013), Selected Poems from Modernism to Now (2012), and La Poésie de Geoffrey Hill et la Modernité (2007).

So you plan to be tested on John Ashbery for the French Concours. Should you visit Harvard to consult the poet’s personal 5,000-volume library? It was donated by his husband David Kermani to the University after Ashbery’s death in 2017, following Harvard’s acquisition of his papers and manuscripts in 1986, for $200,000. If your budget does not extend quite as far as a trip to Boston, you will probably attempt to understand the poet without sitting at his desk while trying to write your own poem, as Harvard undergraduates are now encouraged to do. Ashbery graduated from Harvard in 1949, and the University already possessed the earliest recording made on the campus of his work (a 1951 performance of his play “Everyman’’), so there was a long-standing relationship that enhances the meaning of those choices of where to establish a legacy, and how to be generous while doing so (see J. Schuessler, “For John Ashbery’s Personal Library, a Spot on the Shelves at Harvard,’’ NYT 1/23/2019).

Review by Noëlle Cuny, Cercles : revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone, Université de Haute Alsace (Mulhouse)