A Study of Ashbery’s “At the Farm”
John Ashbery (1927) is “considered one of the first generation of the New York school of poetry, where the teaching is based on mixing philosophical tone . . . .[in addition to ], paying special attention to life events” (Kelly 13). Mr. Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, where he graduated from Harvard and later from Columbia University. He is known as the vanguard [forerunner] of a new type of poetry. Mr. Ashbery has published over thirty books of poetry (Kelly, 376). Mr. Ashbery has written other poems such as “The Painter” in his 1956 collection. He wrote the poem “At North Farm” in 1987, in the collection called A Wave. For most people, it is a complication to try to understand Ashbery in how he presents his poems, [the readers] trying to keep the personalities straight and trying to think of the “character” as fluid [effortless] and unfixed [unpredictable] (Kelly 13).
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The “subject” is so excited, he is traveling non-stop to get back. As you read this poem, you will notice it is a narrator who is speaking, not the author himself. In the first paragraph, the narrator explains how lonely the person has been but is eager to see the individual he left behind. There is imagery throughout Ashbery’s poem were he relates his enthusiasm comparing how he feels to farm items that are so full with their [substances] that they are overflowing, such as the granaries [silos] bursting with meal, sacks of meal piled to the rafters, streams running with fattening fish. There is mention of different seasons from blizzards [winter] to desert heat [summer]. Nothing is going to stop him from finding the person he is searching
...he imagery of the more intensely-felt passages in the middle of the poem. Perhaps the poet is like someone at their journey's end, `all passion spent', recollecting in tranquillity some intimations of mortality?
In the first line of the poem the speaker states his fondness for going out to eat blackberries. "I love to go out in late September..." This line makes it clear that the speaker goes out voluntarily because of his desire to eat the blackberries. In the next line, the speaker describes the blackberries in vivid imagery. "among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries. This description of the blackberries does not leave the reader to wonder about how the blackberries look or taste. The re...
As the man in the poem continues his journey, he takes time to notice things in detail. This I believe is a way of cherishing what you might not see again. This also shows us that he cares about the community to notice the little things one last time. For example Edward Field describes the "magnolia trees with dying flowers" and the "bright spring day" (qtd. in Schwiebert 41). The man even picked up the local newspaper before he left, this shows that he cares what is going on in the town and feels enough apart of the community to find out what is in the newspaper that day.
The popular American Poet, Billy Collins, is playing a significant role in the evolution of poetry. His writing style evokes an array of emotions for the reader. Every stanza in his poetry passes the satirical standard that he generated for himself over his career. Collins swiftly captivates his readers through his diverse use of figurative language. More specifically, his use of vivid imagery paired with humorous personification and extended metaphors create his unique style of satirical poetry. This developed form of writing appeals to a large crowd of people because the generally accessible topics that he discusses are fairly easy to resonate for the common man. However, his poetry offers an interesting perspective on what otherwise would be simplistic ideas. The main themes and concepts that are being presented in each of his writings are revered and coveted by the general population. An appealing aspect of his writing is his ability to directly convey the main idea within the poem. As a result, the reader can understand the meaning of his work with ease. The typical beginning of his work gives the reader a slight taste of what is to come. Billy Collins’ unique writing style and various trademarks directly influenced by his ability to propagate an array of emotions for the reader, his humorous tone, and the accessibility of the topics he describes within his poetry.
Billy Collins refused to stick to a standard of writing which has gained him so much fame over the years. He has been acknowledged with many awards and titles including Poet Laureate and Poet of the State of New York, he has also been compared to the late, great Robert Frost. His simplistic poetry structure and witty, dry humor has set a standard for the modern poet. Billy Collin’s hospitable and playful poetry will continue his legacy for many years to come.
Jarrell, Randall. ?Fifty Years of American Poetry.? The Third Book of Criticism. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969.
The long lines that open the poem represent the movement of the bus through the landscape. When it stops moving to pick up the “lone traveler” in the sixth stanza, it stops the long sentence that has been running since the start of the poem. As the bus resumes and picks up speed, the lines follow suit. It is night, and therefore dark as the bus enters the tree line of the thick woods of New Brunswick. Here, an important change occurs, when a drastic landscape shifts occurs;
Throughout his poetry, Collins demonstrates, in a witty and satirical voice, his insightfulness towards the objects, using numerous poetic devices, especially allusions and metaphors to effectively convey his messages, most of which revolves around the theme of death. Humor and irony are unique combinations Collins displays in many of his poems, challenging the readers to interpret his work from different perspectives. In “Introduction to Poetry,” Collins offers a witty comparison between the definition of poetry and various other experiments. He asks the reader to “hold [the poem] up to the light/ like a color slide” (1-3), “press an ear against its hive” (4), “drop a mouse into a poem” (5), “walk inside the poem's room” (7), and “waterski across the surface of a poem” (9-10). Rather than stiffly explaining the definition of a poem, he finds creative and humorous approaches to explain his methods of enjoying the poems, and promote the readers’ interest towards discovering the true meaning of poetry.
“I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive…” (3); so begins a poem titled “Introduction To Poetry” by Billy Collins. “Introduction To Poetry” is, in fact, the introduction to a collection of poetry called Poetry 180, a program started by Collins during his time as poet laureate for the United States. The aim of this program is to get people, especially teenagers, interested in or reconnected with poetry. Collins selected an assortment of poems that are just fun to read and not meant to be discussed; he says in the forward to the collection, “High school is the focus of my program because all too often it is the place where poetry goes to die” (xvii). Collins was honored with the title of poet laureate in 2001 because of his own outstanding poetry. Billy Collins is considered by some to be the greatest American poet since Robert Frost because he connects with his readers, he makes the mysterious ordinary, and he portrays the ordinary as mysterious.
For this assignment, I have decided to write about a famous poem of Billy Collins which is titled as ‘Introduction to Poetry’ written in 1996.
The poem is launched by a protracted introduction during which the speaker indulges in descriptions of landscape and local color, deferring until the fifth stanza the substantive statement regarding what is happening to whom: "a bus journeys west." This initial postponement and the leisurely accumulation of apparently trivial but realistic detail contribute to the atmospheric build-up heralding the unique occurrence of the journey. That event will take place as late as the middle of the twenty-second stanza, in the last third of the text. It is only in retrospect that one realizes the full import of that happening, and it is only with the last line of the final stanza that the reader gains the necessary distance to grasp entirely the functional role of the earlier descriptive parts.
In this essay I will compare and contrast a collection of different poems by Carol Anne Duffy, Robert Browning, Ben Johnson and Simon Armitage.
Mar. 1972: 86-100. pp. 86-100. Major, Clarence. American Poetry Review.
The first stanza is crowded with sensual and concrete images of nature and its ripeness during the first stages of Autumn. Autumn is characterized as a “season of…mellow fruitfulness” (1). It is a season that “bend[s] with apples the mossed cottage-trees” (5), “fill[s] all fruit with ripeness to the core” (6), “swell[s] the gourd, and plump[s] the hazel shells” (7), and “set[s] budding more” (8). The verbs that Keats uses represent the bustling activity of Autumn and also reflect the profusion of growth. Autumn also acts as the subject of all the verbs, indicating its dynamic behavior. Furthermore, the multitude of these images depicting the ripening of nature contributes to the sense of abundance that characterizes the first stanza. The stanza also contains many short phrases, again calling up images of abundance. Keats, through his use of sensual imagery, draws readers into the real world where there will ultimately be decay and death. The sound devices in this stanza further develop the sensual imagery and...
For many of Browings fans and himself, poetry did not need to be a big extravagent piece of work, and for he critics who did not understand that aspect, Browning`s work would always “lacking something”. Although there was not understanding of that, there was still a light at the end of the tunnel for Browning in the respect of being appreciated by later critics. Of course, not all of Browning`s poetry reviews were pesimistic, and one literary scholar, William DeVane, considered the poet`s name to have increased as he had gotten older, along with the number of positive reviews. Although Browning was obviously not happy by the many negative reviews he received, but even some of the most brutal reviewers acknowledged his flat out raw talent, even if they did not agree with how he went about using it.