***As we discussed in class today, students with last names beginning with A through K will read and report on "The Skaters," while those in the L through Z group will work on "Litany. Please post your response to this thread by 10:00AM Friday***As we wrap up our time with John Ashbery, I'd like to take a little time to look at two epic poems from his earlier poetic output: "The Skaters" and "Litany." On Wednesday, we'll divide the class in two groups, who'll each take a look at one of these poems, and who'll lead our brief in-class discussion of each (maybe ten minutes). Focus on your experience of the poem, its effects upon you, your reading process, what connections you make, etc. To facilitate that process, I'd like you to make a short post on this thread (a couple sentences, maybe more)
"The Skaters," from 1966's Rivers and Mountains, begins on page 147 in the Collected, and you can read a few useful passages about it in Lehman's book, on pages 114-116 and 120-121. Upon first reading it, Kenneth Koch likened it to T.S. Eliot's modernist classic, "The Waste Land," and indeed, the poem aims for many of the same effects: collage, juxtaposition, the alienation of contemporary life, etc. There's no recording of "The Skaters" available, but perhaps that's for the best. I'd recommend reading it (or at least part of it) out loud, to simulate the live reading effect Ashbery finds ideal.
There is, on the other hand, a recording available of "Litany," which begins on page 553 in the Collected. This is very helpful, since it's humanly impossible to read the poem as Ashbery intended it without the help of someone else. As the gloss at the start of the poem tells us, its two columns are meant to be read simultaneously and independently of one another. In 1980, Ashbery and Ann Lauterbach (shown above in split-screen) recorded the poem in its entirety, each reading one column, and with their voices split into separate stereo channels. Until Ashbery provided us with a useable copy of the recording, this strange treasure was more or less unavailable, and even Lauterbach had burned out her cassette from using it in her classes.
You can (and should) listen to the poem by following the links below. I'm also providing links for a short essay by Lauterbach about the recording process, and the write-up I did for PennSound Daily when we launched the recording:
On Wednesday, after the Martin Luther King Day holiday, we'll start our unit on Frank O'Hara.
Posts
Litany
ReplyDeleteI’m really not sure what to take away from the poem. I can appreciate the creativity of this form but I am not sure what to think or say because my thoughts felt so jumbled and it was complete and utter chaos. Reading it in the way the poem was meant to be read along with the recordings (using headphones) was impossible because my eyes were jumping back and forth from page to page and I was unable to make sense of it. I felt as though I was a schizophrenic and was hearing these two opposing voices in my head and it was all gibberish. I stopped the recordings briefly and read several lines that were spoken by Ashbery and then the other lines read by Lauterbach and both voices were completely unconnected, opposing forces. But in thinking of what the title of the poem means I believe the poem is intended to be repetitious and to be reread more than once. Irrevocably so, I don’t have the patience nor the will to reread the poem many times over (I can’t even get through the entire poem to begin with!) I can just picture him with his “1960s porn mustache” and a big smug look on his face when people attempt to read or make sense of this poem.
Litany- Since we first started reading Ashberry I have despised reading him and this poem makes me dread reading him even more. To me the poem is complete and utter chaos and I was unable to concentrate because I was constantly going back and forth.
ReplyDeleteI attempted to read "The Skaters", and the only thing that is clear is that this poem makes absolutely no sense. I believe the feeling I got while attempting to read this would be very similar to suicide. I just do not understand the randomness of thoughts, it is almost like channel surfing and writing your 1st thoughts about each channel then putting them all together, getting them published, and making money off of it, which would make John Ashbery a genius.
ReplyDeletecaycee huber
Litany
ReplyDeleteI can only grab bits and pieces from this poem, and none of it seems to convey any valuable information. Trying to read along was impossible and actually made it worse when trying to decipher the "message". I can't really remember how the poem made me feel because there was too much going on to interpret any of it. I'm also not sure of any general themes, or poetic rhythm, because the chaotic nature of the poem gave me a headache.
Kaleigh
I read "The Skaters" and I felt like I could grasp bits and pieces of it. However, after reading the entire poem, I realized that I was unable to make sense of it as a whole. I did like some of the wordings."...Bearing me once again in quest of the unknown. These sails are life itself to me." I don't know why, but I like the way that sounds.
ReplyDeleteLitany- Litany is an interesting poem in the fact that I could not really understand what was going on. I tried the selective hearing by only listening to one person at a time and then try to put it all together. There is a lot going on in this poem but it is just too hard to figure out what.
ReplyDeleteNick Wirsch
After reading litany and every other John Ashbery poem for that matter I have come to realize that trying to analyze them is nothing short of a near impossible task. Litany being no exception. While listening to the recordings the only thing that I was able to gain from it was a huge headache and mass confusion. In part 3 I decided to read both voice one and voice two separately and then listening to the recording afterwards. I find it interesting that Ashbery strives to break traditional forms and concepts of classical poetry but yet he still reverts back to some of the traditional styles like rhyme and alliteration. I noticed that there was a lot of alliteration, more noticeably in voice one’s monologue. On page 648, demise, delighted, distraction, destiny, derelict, decrepit, deduce, districts were found within only twenty six lines. I also noticed some rhyming for example pg. 650, mine, Valentine, fine, time. Another thing I noticed was that both voices mentioned some of the same lines or played off of the same ideas, for example on pg. 658 voice one says “it’s poetry, it’s extraordinary, it makes a great deal of sense”, voice two also says this same line on pg. 651. Although I found many separate sections of Litany that I was able to take a stab at analyzing, it was hard to see the big picture. Although, I do not think that Ashbery meant for this poem to picked apart and analyzed too closely. I think his point here was the whole experience of the hearing the collaboration of both voices, as though you were listening in on two peoples conversations and making out of it what you want. If I had to take a guess though, I would say that one of the last lines of the poem “fled like arrows from the taunt string of a restrained consciousness” summed up a little of what Ashbery was trying to say in this poem. The confusion of two independent parts being simultaneously read was purposely trying to get the listener to think of this poem not as a poem but an experience which forces you to think differently than you normally would when hearing a poem. I think that Ashbery wanted his audience to break free of the restrained “mass-produced” ways we have been trained to think about poetry and find our own meanings within it. - Ashley Menzer
ReplyDeleteI tried my best to read Litany and understand it but the more I read the more confused I became. The format of the poem was really hard and made it almost impossible to understand let alone read. The recording of the poem was painful to listen to. Ashbery's voice is very distinct and I could hear Lauterbach's voice when Ashbery wasn't talking. However, when they both were talking, which occured often, I found myself only being able to hear Ashbery's voice. I couldn't make out what Lauterbach was saying and she might as well have been speaking Spanish to me. I didn't even know how to comprehend the poem while both of them were speaking. And listening to the recordings while reading was just as confusing. Overall, this was an extremely tough poem to even begin to try to understand.
ReplyDeleteChris Mechlem
The Litany poem had several different impacts. In part 1 I felt like most; overwhelmed and frustrated that I couldn't understand both at the same time. The poem then began to remind me of the times right before bed when I begin throwing ideas around or recapturing an event to have it suddenly change. Listening to the poem gave me a sense of an anxiety attack perhaps or of a person stressed beyond capacity. I even began to think of the confusion I would imagine someone with a bipolar disorder having. Lines in certain forms like "The pancake is around in idea" and "I had greatly admired the shirt" reminded me of childhood books and more simplicity. Another aspect of the form of it was the italics made that side seem more elegant and more so with her voice. Ashbury's side seemed to be taken crisp cuttly with somewhat cartoonish accent.
ReplyDeleteDenise
Litany is inherently chaotic. I think that's part of the point of it. I came away from it with the impression it's similar to the way two people experience a relationship. Sometimes in harmony, other times totally separate and clashing.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with the comment that Litany is possibly a metaphor for a relationship. Of course, like others here I found it as a whole confusing to say the least. I was able to get through the first part before I decided to give up the fight. Possibly to come back and fight another day, we'll see. The recording didn't help
ReplyDeleteat all, maybe it's just because I'm a guy and can't concentrate on more than one thing at once :)
In some parts I did feel like the two halves were approaching the same images from different angles, maybe saying the same things from two different points of view, complementing each other, or sometimes just saying completely the opposite of each other. p.558/9: "Who come to your house", juxtaposed with "Now that they are gone", or words that are associated with each other, p.554/5: "In explicit sex/ The casual purring of a donkey / Rouses... ", or p.570/71: "The spaces between the teeth/ Slips over the cogs". Lots of this.
For some reason, I get the impression that part 1 is about childhood.
I read the Skaters. I have to agree that while some bits and phrases make sense and are well worded, overall it doesn't make sense. I'm trying to get a grasp on Ashbery's poetry, but it seems like he just writes a bunch of random thoughts down, and for some reason it is considered brilliant? It just goes on and on for pages. Sometimes I wonder if Ashbery just wrote these poems with no clear intent just to see what people would make of them. I do not really see what message or point he is trying to convey in most of his work.
ReplyDeleteDella Freeman
LITANY---> I went into the reading/listening of Litany with an open mind... and then my mind immediately closed when it was bombarded with the words of Ashbery and Lauterbach, and I became completely overwhelmed. I began listening to Litany and writing down certain words and phrases that stuck out to me, (as I attempted to read along), but soon I was writing a combination of both what Ashbery as well as Lauterbach was reading. The combination soon twisted into a hodgepodge of past lines and current lines from what both of my ears were hearing. The complete chaos of the piece is still leaving me confused, and annoyed. I felt as if I couldn't focus (I wonder if that's what Ashbery wanted?...) and I kept wanting to start the recording over to try to pay better attention. I feel as if I can't even begin to attempt to analyze the poem because it makes my head hurt just thinking about it. Kudos to those of you who came to some interesting conclusions that i read above. [k. szabolcs]
ReplyDeleteI too kept going back and forth with Litany. There are very few Ashberry poems that I can say I even remotely enjoyed, but this is not one of them. Maybe this is what it is like to be in Ashberry's head. The chaotic thinking of so many things at once. It comes out to being a bunch of noise. I do not need a poem to make complete sense in front of me, but this one was utterly ridiculous. At least Lauterbach used a little more conviction when reading, so it was a nice change of pace from constantly hearing just Ashberry's drone voice. I am ready for O'Hara now.
ReplyDeleteThe correlation you made between Ashbery's writing style and contemporary visual arts seems to help explain this poem, "The Skaters". Visual fine arts are something that I can relate to; I was a Studio drawing and painting major for a year in Chicago, before I realized that I wanted to use my degree to earn a living wage. The poem feels like a study piece. I get the feeling that Ashbery is frequently experimenting in this poem in the same way that artists experiment with what they hope will be a new and effective combination of the visual elements. Just like a painter, most of the combinations Ashbery makes do not work well, but some of them do. This poem made me feel like I was stuck in room where someone else was channel surfing with the TV volume too loud while I was trying to read.
ReplyDeleteMaybe this poem would interest me more if I was more interested in the activity of writing poetry.
-Dan Bird
I just read "The Skaters." I tried very hard to enjoy it but through the entire read it felt like Ashbery was enjoying a 40 page teasing session. On one hand it feels as though the author is attempting to provide an avenue through which the reader can relate to it on a personal level. On the other hand it seems as though we as readers are being told the information provided is far too personal and far fetched for us to understand, and to take the author's word for it, so to speak. I don't know which is more frustrating, not being able to understand something, or knowing understanding is accessible, but still out of reach.
ReplyDeleteBenjamin Burns
In the beginning of "The Skaters", Ashbery uses images to create a scene of winter. He mentions the month February, which is also a big clue. In this creation of the scene he mentions lots of colors. I found this ironic, since February in New York is cold, and I'd say the most overwhelming color of winter is gray... which is hardly a color at all. There was interesting imagery like this throughout the entire poem, though connecting all of the images into one comprehensive theme or narrative was rather difficult.
ReplyDeleteHere are a few student responses that were e-mailed to me:
ReplyDeleteAll of Ashbery's works have had a tendency to confuse me and litany is no
exception to this generalization. While listening to it I felt an overwhelming
feeling of confusion, chaos and frustration similar to if I was trying to listen in
on three conversations at once while listening to the television in the back
round. I originally attempted to follow Voice one, I however soon found my self
switching between the voices during the unaccompanied lines which only
seemed to help get me more lost.
After reading and listening for thirty pages or so I feel like all I was able to take
away from this unpleasant experience was an annoying headache and a stronger
dislike for Ashbery's abstract writing style. I do however respect Ashbery's
masterful abilities as a writer. The amount of work he must have put into this
unique poem must have been astonishing.
-- Tyler Swinney
_________________________________
I was only able to listen to the first part and some of the second part. This was a painful experience. I think the idea is creative but there's no way to take anything away from this poem. I can't interpret any underlying meaning or reasoning because I can't concentrate when I hear it. I remember hearing the words flowers and dust repeatedly, so every time I heard them I focused on them. Overall, this was very frustrating to listen to.
-- Carolyn Pace
Litany is an absurd poem when reading one side and listening along to both readers at the same time. The association with a male voice reading the left side while a female voice reads the right poses an interesting relationship between men and women. I felt it was meant to show the relationship between the two sexes on multiple levels such as sharing the same experiences, but seeing them through a different light. I think it would be easier to get a hold of the poem by reading one half aloud to yourself and listen to the other half as you read along. There are lines that I do enjoy, but the way it is intended to be read is deplorable. I could spend weeks on the first section of the poem and still not be able to understand what it means.
ReplyDeleteLitany, according to Merriam-Webster
ReplyDelete1: a prayer consisting of a series of invocations and supplications by the leader with alternate responses by the congregation
2 a: a resonant or repetitive chant
b: a usually lengthy recitation or enumeration
c: a sizable series or set
After listening to the first couple of minutes of Litany, I wondered what the actual definition of the word Litany is; after refreshing myself I have a better grasp of what is going on during the poem. Litany also re-affirms what I had always suspected about Ashbery: he focuses on form more than function. I think Litany is mostly an exercise in form. No doubt there is some personal meaning and other truths in the poem, but I'm not sure it's important.
I just read/listened to "Litany". When I first read along with the recording, I could only follow John Ashbery's reading. I would catch a few bits of the other part, but if I tried to listen to both I ended up not understanding it. Unfortunately the recording for Part 1 did not work for me, so I started at Part 2. My first interpretation was that it was about a relationship, but after following along with the recording I went back and re-read the beginning. I found that it sounded more like he was referring to some type of religion or maybe a relationship with God. He spoke of "long benches" and "we used to sing off key," which gave me the church(old school room) setting. The reference of the tree towering over everything else seemed to be a metaphor for "God." However, I do seem to think that it could still be a relationship because on page 580, I can't help but picture a wedding.
ReplyDelete-Matt Prichard
When I started reading "Litany" I was expecting a dialogue, but that was not the case. There seemed to be no logical organization to this poem. Reading the poem was hard to do (because I'm sure Ashbery did not intend for one person to read it) but listening to the recording was equally hard. I just felt overwhelmed and confused and I could not follow it at all.
ReplyDeleteChriszella sent me this response yesterday afternoon, and must not have been able to post it since then:
ReplyDeleteLitany
John Ashberry wrote, "any art once it leaves the studio, is going to be misinterpreted for better or worse- 'misprision' is the term used by Harold Bloom for our fertile misunderstanding of the poet's aim. It often seems that the artist's role is precisely to make himself misunderstood, that misunderstanding and appreciation are much the same." In Ashberry eyes referring from the quote, everyone is under the notion that poetry is meant to be understood, however, many Ashberrian readers would agree that isn't the case when it comes to reading Ashberry. With the help of learning about the Beat Generation, and realizing their main purpose for thier work was to go against typical literary standards, I can relate semi-easily to Ashberry work. Simply because I read his work almost unconsiously. It is as if I am reading but not reading. While I read his work, its like decoding a word search and letting the the words hidden within the page to raise themselves off the page from two-di!
mensional to three-dimensional figures rotating right in front of my face. And that is exactly what Ashberry does for me.
Now when it comes to Litany, I was deifinately taken back by the skillfullness and discontinuty that is invovled in this piece. At times it was like the words played like a magical symphony all orchestrated together following along harmonously, then immediately switched to being as erratic as nails against a blackboard. What i was able to do, was listen and not listen, read but not read. That is mostly what I love about Ashberry's work. It causes me to witness words on a page in a whole new perspective. Imagining situations in my life in ways I have never seen before.
Ashberry in this piece wanted to be misunderstood, it not only defines Ashberry in relation to his audience but also in relation to himself. Misunderstanding in this piece can be looked at as a sought-for activity emphazing the materiality of an art object and its context, and calls attention to the subjectivity of experience. Such an activity denies an artist the comfort of a single perspective, nor acceptance of the limited understanding that can be attained by any single fixed subject.
In Litany it seems as if Ashberry is interested in unraveling the moment as it is lived and reflected upon in his poetry. Amazingly, Ashberry is brilliant enough to pull such a difficult task off through this poem.
Ps- some wonderful responses, which I think will make for a great class discussion, but we're still significantly short of a full class. Where are the rest of you?!?
ReplyDelete"Litany" further increased my dislike for this type of "poetry". I've come to the conclusion that the genius "meaning" of this poem is probably to do exactly what it did: stir up confusion/aggravation/annoyance.
ReplyDeleteThat was probably his whole point. To do something different, unique, novel... But jumbling nonsense words and noise together just doesn't sound like a very pioneering/"avant-garde" concept to me. Perhaps if a poet did it in some interesting way where you knew there was some underlying meaning to delve into and figure out, it might seem like an innovative concept. But why is it so groundbreaking for him to write like this, with no clear thought or direction, and leave the meaning completely up to the reader's feelings or insights? It just seems like something that anyone could do. Maybe I sound like an ignorant unenlightened person who doesn't know how to explore creative/inner meanings, but this is just beyond what I can care enough about to spend time wanting to find its message. It just puts me in a bad mood and gives me a headache. And if that is the reaction Ashbery wanted to arouse from people, then I'm not quite sure how he ever got this far. Hopefully the new poets will turn my mind back in the right direction because right now my curious, interested, open-minded outlook on this is quickly dwindling.
Litany - What can I say..hmmm....lost and irritated are the two best words to explain it. Thirty seconds into the recording I lost it. The two of them speaking at the same time drove me crazy. How are you supposed to interpret something you cant even listen to. Anyway, finished with my ranting. Needless to say I did not finish the recording but instead read each section by itself and came across some moments of curiousity and sanity. I know this is not how it was ment to be read, but is it possible to get anything out of listening to them speak at the same time?
ReplyDelete-Stacey Ward