Criticism > Poetry > Ashbery, John - Jody Norton (essay date 1995)

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Jody Norton (essay date 1995)

SOURCE: '"Whispers out of Time': The Syntax of Being in the Poetry of John Ashbery," in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. XLI, No. 3, Fall, 1995, pp. 281-305.

[In the following essay, Norton analyzes Ashbery's verse in relationship to the major modes of linguistic theory and philosophy, in particular contemporary gay theory.]

The meaning of a word is its use in the language.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

The poem is you.

—John Ashbery, Shadow Train

In describing John Ashbery's poetry, Paul Breslin speaks of a contemporary attenuation of the sense of an occasion for poetry, "since all occasions are really only the one occasion of consciousness meditating on its own frustrations." He...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Paul Zweig (review date 1972)
   2. Fred Moramarco (essay date 1976)
   3. David Kalstone (essay date 1976)
   4. Grace Schulman (essay date 1977)
   5. Dana Yeaton (review date 1981)
   6. David Fite (essay date 1981)
   7. Bonnie Costello (essay date 1982)
   8. Thomas A. Fink (essay date 1984)
   9. John Ashbery with Paul Munn (interview date 1990)
   10. Steven Meyer (review date 1995)
   11. Jody Norton (essay date 1995)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. How to Analyze a Poem
2. Poetry