Caveat: What was left was like a field

Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

What is Poetry

The medieval town, with frieze
Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow

That came when we wanted it to snow?
Beautiful images? Trying to avoid

Ideas, as in this poem? But we
Go back to them as to a wife, leaving

The mistress we desire? Now they
Will have to believe it

As we believed it. In school
All the thought got combed out:

What was left was like a field.
Shut your eyes, and you can feel it for miles around.

Now open them on a thin vertical path.
It might give us–what?–some flowers soon?

– John Ashbery, 1998

2 Comments

  1. Peter J.

    I know it is not really proper form to try to analyze poetry, but the line “What was left was like a field” refers to — the mind, the imagination? Is he saying that the apparatus of socialization (one branch of which is education), hammers down our minds/imaginations/creativity/aesthetic-sense, and when we become fully adult, we try to pick up the pieces, one way to do so being poetry?

  2. jaredway

    I think there’s nothing wrong with analyzing poetry. I just don’t do it much, myself, these days.
    With respect to that line… seems exactly right, to me. A good interpretation.

Comments are closed.

Back to Top