The art of permutation in John Ashbery’s strata poetry

Abstract

This study intends to explore the art of permutation in John Ashbery’s stratum poetry, which is entopic in the majority and incremented in some. Through his permutation, Ashbery developed his unique poetry voice and expressed apothegms relevant to his day. Ashbery is one of the most influential poets writing in English. He has won nearly every major American award for poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize. Permutation in Ashbery’s strata poetry introduces change presented by means of slight and sometimes dramatic alterations in the thematic development. The effects of this process vary from psychological, geometric and graphosyntatic effect. The research is divided according to these effects and the researcher follows the formalistic approach in juxtaposition with permutation in analyzing the selected strata poems. Strata poetry is best chosen for this study for it represents a wide array of layers of meanings, time and place settings consequently resulting in an expansion of the space in which the meaning is created and verified. Thus, permutation is more applicable and easier to trace in such poems. Ashbery, turns permutation into a whole culture of positive and meaningful digression. Through his unique and novel mastery of this literary theory, permutation, he succeeds in elevating poetry to a new level, so readably juicy of meanings and values.

Keywords:

• permutation
• entropy
• psychology
• geometry
• graphosyntax
• research work
• multilevel analysis

1. Introduction

The objective of this paper is to explore the uniqueness John Ashbery achieved in his strata poetry through applying the art of permutation in such a style that set him as one of the most influential poets writing in English. His poetry influenced diverse British and American poets. The breadth of his influence indicates that, as David Herd states in his book John Ashbery and American Poetry, “there are any ways for the young poet to learn from Ashbery’s astonishing array of styles, voices, postures and concerns” (Herd, 2000, p. I). This research is concerned with one of these array of styles, that is permutation. Permutation is one of the new approaches used in the analysis of literary genres. It refers, as Herman Rapaport explains in his book The Literary Theory Toolkit: A Compendium of Concepts and Methods, “to a multiple repetitions and rearrangements of a sequence of distinct elements” (Rapaport, 2011, 208). Permutation poetry is, at its simplest, “poetry that consists of a list (which may or may not have semantic meaning). And the elements of that list are then scrambled” (Hall 173).

Permutation introduces change, as Rapaport further explains, “by means of slight alterations which have additive functions and give the illusion of linear compositional development, when, in fact, the sequences are largely circular and subject to being constellated as synchronic parallel activities that have an overall textual effect” (Rapaport, 2011, 208). Besides, permutation takes its effect from “the reader’s matching of the b with the a through the allusive referential. The effect may be humorous or serious even ecstatic” (Hall, 1982, p.174). In Some Aspects of Text Grammars: A Study in Theoretical Linguistics and Poetics, Teun A. Van Dijk sheds more light on permutation as “infractions upon normal expectations of ‘normal’ presence and order of sequences. Their interpolation and interpretative re-ordering will produce subjective information and increase the entropy of a narrative text” (Dijk, 1972, p. 305).

Dijk’s definition of entropy includes randomness, chaos, doubt and disorder, all of which are easily achieved through permutation. Entropy also involves “the constant and irreversible degradation of energy in every system, a degradation that results in a continually increasing state of disorder and of nondifferentiation within matter” (Mortuza, 2014, p. 96). Most of Ashbery’s permutated poetry can be classified as entropic. His ability to go beyond what is real or conventional, set his poetry free of the limitations of mind, of what is expected or considered normal.

Permutation is investigated and studied in this research through Ashbery’s strata poetry for what it has of additive and distinct layers of meanings. Strata arises in texts by “mixing different means of expression which can be of quite variegated kind. For example, words from different word classes, words of different length, interjections, different sentence types, different pictures of reality, etc.” (Popescu, 2011, p. 1). Strata poetry has not been yet established as a distinct type of poetry, but rather as an adjective to describe multi-layered poetry. Strata poetry includes these layers of meaning and verifications in addition to other layers of settings (time and place layers) to expand the space in which the meaning is created and verified and to continually challenge the reader for new meanings.

This study is divided into three sections on the effects produced by permutation in Ashbery’s strata poetry including psychological effect, geometric effect and graphosyntatic effect. The research uncovers important messages and deciphers the perplexing disorder that has been a recurring theme of the poet’s works. It also helps other researchers understand permutated texts and establish an analytical assessment of that literary approach. By the end of this paper, the reader is able to exclude beauty from the mess and find reason in confusion, which is Ashbery’s ultimate goal.

2. Review of literature

Permutation has been recently one of the rattling concepts in many fields of science and arts. Papers on permutation range from permutations as the main subject and permutations as an aleatory piece of research. “Permutations of the Self: A Literary and Philosophical Overview from Homer to Nietzsche” is a dissertation by Laszlo Deak, University of Chicago, 1995, in which he enumerates and elucidates the various forms of the concept selfhood from Homer to Nietzsche. Permutation in his study is represented as change caused by infractions in the normal expectations of the notion “self.”

In “The Poetics of Latin Didactic: Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid, Manilius”; a Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1999, Katharina Volk traces the permutations of the defining features of didactic poetry through the individual texts. Permutation in her dissertation is studied and traced as change or displacement, whose analysis is very helpful in the shaping process of distinct characteristics of didactic poetry. This dissertation has been turned into a book later in 2002 for its important role in both defining and analyzing didactic poetry as well as permutation.

A recent Ph.D. thesis that has tackled permutation as a basic part of the research topic is “Cryptographic Applications of Permutation Polynomials” by James A. Vaught, Purdue University, 2016. Vaught discusses permutation as planned change of the elements of a finite field in novel. This change is caused by alterations in the thematic development or main course of the novel.

Based on the review of literature, I managed to form the core field of study of this paper: tracking and studying incremental and entropic permutation in poetry, its techniques and layers of significance through the poetry of John Ashbery. I also managed to explore the unique way in which Ashbery adapts permutation to his poetic objectives in such a style that makes his poetry more effective and eventually memorable.

3. Methodology

Permutation in this research is both the subject and approach of analysis. By tracking elements of permutation through Ashbery’s strata poetry, the researcher is able to analyze his poems and make sense of the vaguest parts. Along with permutation, the researcher follows the formalism approach in investigating the thematic development. The analysis of Ashbery’s strata poetry via permutation is performed on three levels of effect, psychological effect (“This Room,” and “Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape”), geometric effect (“The Sad Thing,” and “Seven-Year Old Auroch Likes This”) and graphosyntatic effect (“Chinese Fire Drill,” and “Alms for the Beekeeper”). The study reveals important messages and deciphers the puzzling disorder that has been a key element of the poet’s works.

4. Psychological effect

This Room

The room I entered was a dream of this room.

Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.

The oval portrait

Of a dog was me at an early age.

Something shimmers, something is hushed up.

We had macaroni for lunch everyday

except Sunday, when a small quail was induced

to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?

You are not even here. (Ashbery, 2001, 3)

This poem introduces permutation as escalating change caused by a rearrangement of distinct elements. “This Room” is one of Ashbery’s strata poems which include multiple layers of time settings. The poem starts in the past simple tense of a dream being described, then shifts to the present in the middle of the poem, “something shimmers, something is hushed up”. The past appears again at the start of the second stanza and is replaced by the present at the end of the poem. Typically, the past precedes the present to indicate thematic progression from one stage of life to the next. As a result, the poem should read as follows:

The room I entered was a dream of this room.

Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.

The oval portrait

Of a dog was me at an early age.

We had macaroni for lunch everyday

except Sunday, when a small quail was induced

to be served to us.

Something shimmers, something is hushed up.

Why do I tell you these things?

You are not even here.

Permutation is used in the original poem as a time rearrangement to indicate a halt in thematic development and a failure to achieve any psychological improvement. It is a psychological imprisonment in the previous phase of the poet’s life when things were incomplete, undone, and scrambled. The poem, like the past, requires consideration. The message of the poem is conveyed more effectively through this technique of permutation, which immerses the reader in the speaker’s disorder and psychological imprisonment.

Although the overall significance of the continuous shifting from past to present is psychological imprisonment in the past phase of life and a consistent intrusion of present occurrences, the time layers contain more. In “of a dog was me at an early age./Something shimmers, something is hushed up” the time shifting introduces a lot of confusion, which is directly conveyed to the reader who tries hopelessly to connect the two lines together. Many rattling questions forcefully impose themselves leading to a serious propagated contemplation of the poem’s minute details until the very end. Who does the speaker describe by “dog”? What is the speaker now if he was a dog at an early age? Is the speaker using poetry as an outlet of his psychological unsettled issues? What shimmers? And what is hushed up?

Eventually, the reader finds himself amidst turmoil, chaos, and entropy. To a certain extent, understanding the speaker’s humor and irony would aid comprehension of certain lines, but it wouldn’t eliminate the entropy in the poem as a whole. Therefore, in “surely all these feet on the sofa were mine,” the speaker is criticizing his previous immature conduct. This explains why he refers to himself as a “dog” in “of a dog was me at an early age,” acknowledging that these excessively numerous footprints can only be those of a dog running around. The entropy created by the speaker is the result of his mental struggle to connect the dots or piece together the distorted images of the past into a coherent picture, but was instead left with psychological chaos. Entropy here started structurally as a result of permutation of time settings, and incremented at the end of the poem with thematic distortion. This incrementation is deliberate. The speaker was in a state of mental disability at the starting of the poem, but as the poem progresses, he loses focus more and more and his psychological mess worsens. Considering the definition of “entropy” as a “quantity that is the measure of energy not available for doing work in a system. It is dead energy” (Reneau, 2013, p. 29), it also applies to this poem in the same way as when the speaker’s enthusiasm for sharing his recollections fades as he discovers the non-existence of an interlocutor. In fact, this is the point at which the poem ends (dead energy). This is what distinguishes Ashbery’s treatment of temporality. He uses time-inconsistent shifts to create an effect of mental chaos that mirrors his own. Deviating from linear time sequences is a technique he employs not only to reflect his own mental disorder, but also skillfully to instill the reader in his own neurotic world.

The end-stopped lines in the first stanza create pauses for thought and allow for more room to rearrange the distorted images of the past into a meaningful story. In contrast to the first stanza, enjambment marks the second stanza in juxtaposition with mental interruption caused by interference of reality. This interference of reality is represented by a shift in subject from “I” to “We”: “we had macaroni for lunch … ,” as well as an allegiance to an outside party in the aporia “why do I tell you these things?”The speaker introduces himself at the beginning of the poem as “I” then as “a dog” and finally as a plural pronoun “We”. All these shifts of the signifier result in meaning changes in the process of permutation: The speaker is in a psychological quest for reality and his lost-psyche. As he emphasizes in the first line in “a dream,” his past is but an uncertainty. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons he begins his collection Your Name Here with this poem: regaining his lost self is an unavoidable preliminary stage to any desired success.

The most important permutation in the poem is paraprosdokian¹ represented in the last line “you are not even here.” It is one of the best examples of what Dijk refers to as “infractions upon normal expectations of ‘normal’ presence and order of sequences” (Dijk, 1972, p. 305). This line is not as straightforward as its syntax or as what the simplicity of its words suggest. It actually flips the entire poem on its head and imposes void connotations to the main course of the poem: the conversation never happened because it is based on a fabricated premise that an interlocutor exists. The speaker is a psychologically unstable person imprisoned in his own mind, jaded ideas and memories, which he refers to as “this room,” and the switch of mood into consciousness does not negate that accusation of insanity or psychological instability in the least. Even when the poet acknowledges the absence of an interlocutor, he still blames himself for disclosing such a dream to him/her, “why do I tell you these things?” The reader is left with the unanswered question of whether the interlocutor is physically absent or simply passive.

The use of paraprosdokian at the end of the poem is also effective in the entropic feature permutation created, as there is more mess and chaos at the end, where the reader must reframe the previous parts to comprehend the entire poem. Paraprosdokian also contributes to the thematic incremented permutation, which began with recalling the past, dangling between the past and present, sudden interference with the present, reconnecting with the past, and then a final twist that the conversation never occurred.

With his unique use of structural and thematic entropy, paraprosdokian, as well as the incremented thematic and structural permutation and the psychological effect implied, Ashbery’s permutation is distinct from his contemporaries like Brion Gysin whose prime use of permutation was restricted to the randomly scrambled words and phrases, for which he used the assistance of computers in a later stage. His poems “I Am that I Am,” and “Poets don’t Own No Words,” for example, are randomized representations of the words included in the titles. There is no incrementation in his permutation as it paddles the same way all towards the end, and entropy here can only be described as structural, not thematic as in Ashbery’s poems. With this boxy permutation of words, readers may find themselves stuck with boresome after a few lines. The unpredictability of Ashbery’s permutation, on the other hand, commits the reader to the end of the poem, where he must continue reading until everything makes sense and feels complete. The effect created by Ashbery’s permutation poems become stronger and more intriguing.

The previous permutations produce such dialectic that the speaker is psychologically unstable. The poet attempts to define the distortion that has occurred in his past with every change in time or signifier or in the main course of thematic development, as a part of incremental permutation. By the end of the poem it is clear that the speaker’s goal is not simply to recall an unresolved story, but also to achieve a specific psychological effect: spiritual relief and peace of mind that a conversation can bring. Once the interlocutor proves to be non-existent to the poet, the entire poem comes to an end because the motive is terminated. With incremental permutation contemplating the hidden meaning or message behind the written words is inevitable. Andrew Debicki explains in his book Poetry of Discovery: The Spanish Generation of 1956–1971 that “usually an awareness of the transformation that has taken place will lead us to focus on the poem’s speaker and his attitude, and thus to discover a level of meaning beyond the superficial subject of the text” (Debicki, 1982, p. 60).

Unlike his earlier poems, which feature place, time and addressee permutations, Ashbery’s sestinas employ a distinct kind of word permutation. The six stanzas of Ashbery’s sestinas, which follow the standard permutation of end words of 123,456, 615243, 364125, 532614, 451362, and an envoi of the remaining three end words, make for an excellent example of a sestina. Take Ashbery’s “Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape” (Ashbery, The Double dream of Spring 106), as an example. This poem is a typical example of sestina’s permutation, save from its comic sense that deviates from the common lugubrious music of other sestinas enforced by the conventional permutation (of which Ashbery’s “The Painter” is an example). The reader is prompted to reconsider the poem as a more serious work of writing than it appears by the use of the six permuted words (thunder, apartment, country, pleasant, scratched, and spinach). The characters in the poem are based on the “Popeye” cartoon, and while some of their dialogue is absurd, the repeated words they use are skillfully chosen. The words “thunder,” “apartment,” and “country” all have a patriotic connotation. One must reflect on his or her definition of patriotism. Does it involve loving one’s “country” despite disliking its circumstances? Or is it just an “apartment” that one is not emotionally attached to and can move out of when things are not going well? It is the reader’s “thunder” or most startling question to consider “scratch.” Therefore, a permutation of these words is most suited to convey the fundamental meaning of the poem. The remaining two words, “pleasant,” and “spinach,” may be added to keep the narrative flowing and lend the poem a mild comic quality.

This is Ashbery’s area of expertise. He is aware of the limitations of his use of permutation. He decided not to add his other permutations since they would be more difficult for the reader to understand and would likely divert their focus from the poem’s sublime message. Other literary devices, such as enjambment, alliteration, and caesura, were used to reinforce both his sestina’s usual permutation and the meaning of the poem. Therefore, the entropy generated by his other forms of permutation shows to be non-existent in his sestinas. In Ashbery’s sestinas, rather than the disjointed pieces found in other poems, the most important thing to consider is the content and how it relates to reality.

5. Geometric effect

Ashbery’s later compositions underwent fewer iterations that he explains in one of his interviews: “because of my strong desire to avoid all unnecessary work, I have somehow trained myself not to write something that I will either have to discard or be forced to work a great deal over” (Ashbery (2009)” 196). However, drafting never stops, but the reader is now involved, or to be more accurate, is the one in charge. Ashbery’s later poems can thus be described as “succinct,” “precise,” or “entopic,” and “unfinished.” Everything depends on the reader, who is gently prodded into continuing to draft the permutated and scrambled components until he comes up with a pleasing version that, while it might not be in the ideal grammatical or thematic order, makes sense to his own universe of ideas and notions. When the speaker jumbles together main aspects of space, time and characters, making it impossible for the reader to arrive at a cogent, logical conclusion until the very end, geometric effect would be one of the main outcomes that enables the reader to make the connections and interconnections necessary to build a web of understandable and complete ideas. In this instance, drafting is an ongoing process since each reader builds his own draft of connections network. Samuel Johnson explains in his book, The Lives of the English Poets, that “a fair precept in poetry is like a seeming demonstration in mathematics, very specious in the diagram, but failing in the mechanic operation” (Johnson, 1858, p. 142).

In mathematics, geometry refers to the relationship between lines, and points and in the ways in which they are all connected. In poetry, it refers to the linkages and thematic relationships between the many sections and components that would make of the poem a sensical whole. As opposed to the geometric study of permutation, in the non-geometric study the reader does not need to draw connections between the jumbled elements or ideas. On the other side, the geometric study enables the reader to construct his/her own net by connecting the many ideas in order to arrive at a final, understandable, and comprehensive picture. An element and a later or earlier element may be connected or related in this way, and it differs from one person to another. The poem, therefore, stays jumbled, and geometric analysis does not transform the permutation into an organic form in which words, sentences and other layers of permutation are arranged in the proper sequence. It is intended to remain in this permuted form as connections could be altered in accordance with each reader’s imagination and concept of logic. It is what frees the poem from analogies. Given that the poem is the poet’s final draft, geometric study aids the reader in making sense of the absurd and order out of chaos. The speaker urges the listener to attempt making connections in order to gradually dissolve the entropy that results from his/her deliberate permutation. It is why geometric study is essential for a thorough investigation of permutation in poetry.

“The Sad Thing” is the first poem to put under the scrutinized study of geometry. It is a very condensed poem Ashbery included in his book Breezeway: New Poems. Despite its simple structure and straight forward language, it is quite disturbing in material. The poem reads as follows:

The Sad Thing

He has a lazy father in Minnesota.

I hope you never have to do this in life, with its crazy

little darkened

rooms. People are standing, an accurate jumble. Family

rose happy campers.

And if the water tastes funny, she must be pretty

young. That came from a tree. (Ashbery, 2015, p. 8)

The speaker starts with the pronoun “he” so the speaker is obviously speaking about an absent person, but then he shifts to another point of interest or focus, “the lazy father.” This shifting process continues till the very end of the poem leaving the reader in complete entropy. The signifier stays the same but the signified evolves from “he” to “lazy father,” to the personal pronoun “I,” then to an anonymous interlocutor “you,” before changing to “people,” “family,” “water,” “she” and finally to still another unidentified entity “that.” Such idiosyncratic use of pronouns implies an incapacity to establish priorities and a fusion that results in depth of perception. For his students, Ashbery’s use of pronouns has been a critical component of their studies. In his paper “John Ashbery’s Poetry: A Postmodern Approach,” Masoumeh Rahimi comments; “In order to understand a ‘vantage point’ for a poem, several related concepts can be found: voice and speaker, self, subject and subjectivity, identity and personality. The reader tries to create a voice or a speaker that brings together the totality of the text and charges the language with his or her presence and meaning” (Rahimi, 2011, 851). However, it would be simpler if the reader accepted Ashbery’s entropic permutation, which is expressed in his peculiar use of pronouns, and tried to understand the bigger picture rather than swimming against the tides of the poem and looking for a speaker or voice. There are many speakers, and none of them is replaceable. The reader is tempted to reach the ultimate message or main point of the poem without skipping over or minimizing any of its components. Ashbery’s own account of his use of pronouns, that he presented in an interview with the New York Quarterly justifies this;

The personal pronouns in my work very often seem to be like variables in an equation. “You” can be myself or it can be another person, someone whom I’m addressing, and so can “he” and “she” for that matter and “we,” … we are somehow all aspects of consciousness giving rise to the poem and the fact of addressing someone, myself or someone else, is what’s the important thing at that particular moment rather than the particular person involved. (qtd. in Perloff, 1999, p. 63)

This shifting of pronouns is Ashbery’s conscious use of the relationship of language to cognition to “investigate and express both the conscious and unconscious elements of these relationships and how they constitute, actuate and are theorized by the mind” (Kherbek, 2014, p. 8). In this approach, Ashbery’s poem serves as both a receptacle for the speaker’s experience or knowledge and a window into the human mind and its various modes of perception. Many of Ashbery’s poems like “America,” and “Night, from his collection The Tennis Court Oath, exhibit this peculiar usage of pronouns.

It is an ongoing drafting process which is completely unlike the traditional drafting processes in both aim and result. Drafting previously aimed at rearranging the elements of a poem or scrambling them to a more clarified version of a poem, a version that puts all the feelings of the poet into one coherent frame as David Ian Hanauer explains; “Permutation includes what is called the drafting and revision stage, (through which) the poet tries to make the poem as succinct, focused, honest and accurate as possible. Once the insight is obtained and a balance between the aesthetic and cognitive components is reached, the poem is considered to be previously finished” (Hanauer, 2010, 30). For his earlier and larger works, Ashbery was renowned for his drafting process. But, as Emily Skillings points out in her book Parallel Movement of the Hands: Five Unfinished Longer Works, Ashbery never intended to reach a final draft or to impose a particular order, message, or picture on the reader: “Ashbery was a careful editor and revisor of his own poetry, especially when it came to longer projects, but his revision process was such that it rarely caused a draft to stray too far from original thought” (Ashbery, 2021). Actually, one could say that Ashbery’s poems are unfinished works of arts. In “The history of Photography,” Ashbery wrote that “For to be finished/is nothing.” He continued that “Only children and dinosaurs like endings/and we shall all be happy once it all gets broken off.” For him, “artistic ‘finish’_varnish, polish, completion_ usually evoke death, how time finishes us off” (Ashbery, Parallel Movement). It is a compliment to Ashbery’s art to refer to his creations as “unfinished”. Because of this, it would not be correct to describe his poetry as concise, honest, or accurate as Hanauer suggests the result of drafting would be.

Ashbery’s poems were purposefully created in this state of being uncertain and unfinished. Therefore, it seems sense that they are complex. Explaining the complexity his poems end with, Ashbery says “I hope my poetry isn’t opaque … it seems to me that my poetry sometimes proceeds as though an argument were suddenly derailed and something that started out clearly suddenly becomes opaque. It’s a kind of mimesis of how experiences come to me” (Ashbery, “John Ashbery’s Poetry” 150). In a similar vein, the ongoing drafting in “The Sad Thing,” aggravates the loss of relevance in the poem through the continuous switch of the main keys of interest. It is intentional and purposeful. Ashbery assures all through the poem that these elements are connected in some way, not irrelevant sentences that can be rearranged, or omitted for irrelevance. Ergo, the end of the second line runs into the beginning of the third line and the fourth line is introduced by the conjunction “and.” All elements are, accordingly, geometrically connected even if they seem irrelevant. The message, surprisingly, comes halting forth as the reader ends investigating the poem. “The Sad Thing” is merely a means to convey a sublime message: Despite the fact that man lives in a world of seemingly irrelevant things and beings, they all work together in a cross-species relationship. They are all one family, as Ashbery intentionally highlights “family rose” through italics. The “sad thing” would then be occupying oneself with all trumpets of life into oblivion of this simple fact. The reader instead of being trapped in this incognito style trying to dissolve its elements, eventually reaches the ultimate purpose that one does not have to understand the parts to understand the whole, yet deeply realizes that for the whole to exist the parts are indispensable. Permutation takes its effect from “the reader’s matching of the b with the a through the allusive referential. The effect may be humorous or serious even ecstatic” (Hall 174).

Contradiction in the semantics of some terms is one more permutation in “The Sad Thing” that produces a different geometric significance. The word “crazy” paves the way for this contradiction so that the semantics of the terms used later are undebatable. Therefore, employing the adverb “accurate” to describe a “jumble” is not done at random but rather purposefully to have a particular impact. A relationship—this time between opposites—is always present, and the reader is led to the same conclusion that the last shift in subject brought. In the end, the reader is able to connect seemingly unconnected concepts, such as “she” and “funny,” ‘pretty young,‘ and ‘tree, ‘to perhaps suggest the significance of family, symbolized by ‘tree,‘ in rearing mentally healthy children. It is the same message that was before made explicit in “family rose happy campers” and implied in “lazy father” as a cause of ‘crazy darkened rooms.‘ Only a geometric analysis can give the utilized permutations meaning and importance. The only way to give meaning and relevance to the permutations utilized in the poem is through a geometric study; otherwise, the reader is left helpless in a tumultuous environment of irrelevant and contradicting elements.

It is a way of understanding rather than interpreting as Ben Hickman asserts in his book John Ashbery and English Poetry “We certainly would not go to Ashbery for an ‘interpretation’ of a text” (Hickman, 2012, 9). Quite individually from any other poet in English literature, Ashbery conducts his message not through words alone, but through permutation, and permutation mostly. It is the unique way in which the poem finds its connection with the reader. It would then be quite misleading to say that “The Sad Thing” is a number of disorganized and irrelevant sentences. Howard W. Bergerson explains in his book Palindromes and Anagrams, that “the poet selects one combination of words out of an infinite number of possible combinations. Simultaneously, he imparts to these words one permutation out of a finite but very large number of possible permutations” (Bergerson, 1973, 20).

“The Sad Thing” is but one amongst other poems written by Ashbery as means of identifying collateral identity. For him identity is not a reflection of the self, but is achieved relatively through one’s relations with other entities around: “The other is a fluid metaphor for the self; Ashbery views himself in the streaming window looking outward, rather than the static, burnished bridge of self-reflection” (Hickman 48). Unlike what critics assume that “Ashbery’s poems have very little connection to each other, and no attempt is made to suggest any” (Hickman 9), Ashbery’s poems prove this dictum to be false and ungrounded. They share an interesting conceit of the “One” and the “Many”. Such union of contraries images the one or the whole in the many. And because the oneness is always being considered as stronger and more influential, the philosophical implication of this simple-seeming detail is considerable. Although there are numerous alternative ways to reach consensus, doing so without diversity results in decline, a lack of active criticism, and conformity at its worst. It is the geometric effect the poem produces, a matrix in which all elements are related to each other thematically to make of the poem a sensical whole, and not necessarily a grammatical, or structurally organized piece of writing. The other poem that can equally be defined as incongruous in material for its geometric opposition is “Seven-Year Old Auroch Likes This”:

Will research tell us tomorrow

of normal morals? Take a Brooklyn family

in fracture mode, vivid,

energizing, throbs to the earlobes. Thanks

to a snakeskin toupee, my grayish push boots

exhale new patina/prestige. Exeunt the Kardashians.

Exit the emergency room. A nifty looking broad

goes up to a goofy guy. (There’s the leader with its bow.)

Well, I wouldn’t do it instantly. I’ll bring you some,

uh, and well I’m dried.

Antique mud wrestlers shape up

for the last time, no scuttling of vain things

left undone. When you get back I’ll just

hit another menu, safe as a can of soup

in a mini-mart.

Saw you first on Masterpiece Theater.

I used to climb right in. That was funny yet unbidden.

When you were alive they called him a stooge.

My voice to young adolescents is like, whom d’ya know,

hiding their accomplishments in bread?

Will keep in looking for birds of prey.

Sunbunnet she ought to be learning/lurking

flinging bridges across enoromous spaces, the way

the Druids did. Perhaps Ottomans, now

that they’ve shrunk.

Mine’s the control and I must deal with it.

Had a little discussion, benches throughout for safety.

—

The salt has lost its savior.

J’accuse. (Ashbery, 2015, p. 10-11)

This poem is one of the best examples of Ashbery’s strata poetry. It starts with the first layer represented in “a seven-year old Aurock” as the main core of interest in this poem. Then aporia introduces the second layer of interest in a philosophical question directed to everyone or possibly no one. The second layer is dichotomous in itself juxtaposing the research field with morals and common ethics. Juxtaposition extends to include opposing meanings: “fracture” and “throb” versus “vivid” and “energizing”. More layers keep erecting till the very end of the poem. The reader is introduced to the third layer with enthusiasm unlike the skepticism and awkwardness he perceives from the title and introductory lines of the poem. With “Thanks” in the fourth line, he begins to form an upbeat perspective on what’s to come. However, his view is interrupted with a severe intrusion of awkwardness represented in irrelevance and the use of foreign language: Despite being a simple word, “thanks” is as plain as dishwater since it has no relevance with the lines before it, at least not yet. The French word “toupee” and the Italian word “patina” even aggravate this sense of inconclusiveness. At this level the reader is very likely already in entropy for he can draw no bearing on such elements with all the semantic turmoil they are implanted in. “Patina/prestige” is an example for this semantic turmoil for they are certainly not synonyms but just one more pattern of ongoing drafting or permutation.

The whole setting of the poem is not aloof from ongoing drafting procedure. The reader travels first to Brooklyn to a family in crisis, then goes to theater “exeunt” to enjoy its different performances, then to an emergency room with its moments of grief and tension. Soon afterwards he is impelled to leave “exit” the emergency room which is used metaphorically to indicate suffering and painful moments of anticipation. Subsequently he encounters a whole different situation, one of misplacement, represented in an attractive woman and a pitiful boy whose get-together looks suspicious at first sight. Switching from formal respectful language to slang offensive “broad” to describe a woman, or very likely as the word suggests “a promiscuous woman,” is a new opposition the poem brings. From willingness into gratefulness then entertainment, suspense and next to immorality the poet takes the reader in an unordinary journey in the feverish tide of life. All of these permutations in place and characters generate meaningless disorder. However, instead of sinking into Ashbery’s coded disorder, one should study the relationship of points and different parts of the poem to decode this disorder into meaningful stories, as John Clare advices all Ashbery’s fans to “order his perceptions into stories” (Hickman 70). If so, one would be able to relate all elements to each other; it is where Ashbery’s aesthetics lie, in linear ordering. Ming Qian Ma asserts in her book Poetry as Re-Reading: American Avant-Garde Poetry and the Poetics of Counter- Method: “a mathematical operation of permutation and combination within an arbitrary parameter establishes a perspectival order” (126).

The first story’s opening line contains a clue. The inquiry “will research tell us tomorrow of normal morals?” is an optimistic ecstasy that the following sentences could reach if well-perceived. From a born-again family one can discern a moral as well as from life and death experiences in hospitals. The second story is acted out by the woman “broad,” the boy and the leader. Including “there is the leader with its bow” between brackets is to indirectly attain the purpose that facts can have millions of facets and that the key can be evident behind the scene. Only research can tell us of normal morals is the value the first line invests. At one minute, the reader may misjudge the woman, but with that piece of detail between brackets the reader has to reconsider. One possible analysis of (there’s the leader with its bow) is that it is a metaphor of blackmailing the woman at the expense of her own principles that may be directly antithetical to the man’s. The use of words of foreign origins (toupee and patina) can be seen as means of drawing attention amidst all the distorting elements in the poem, or they could have been chosen by Ashbery for allegorical significance that may differ from a reader to another.

The second stanza follows the same permutation procedures of the first stanza. It starts in medias res, in a wrestling field. “No scuttling of vain things left undone” provokes the first encapsulated moral message and suggests a reading that goes well beyond the literal. The second line, “no scuttling of vain things left undone,” contradicts whatever force or seriousness that the setting of a wrestling arena might convey. Enjambment is effectively used in this sentence to combine what should be “no scuttling of vain things” with the tragic reality of the completion being “left undone.” Ashbery shows himself as aware of the demeaning and inferior aspects of existence as well as a society that may boast of scientific advancements without giving the spiritual aspect of life any serious thought. The question posed in the first stanza is raised once more in this line, but this time using the term “research” in the literal sense as in “will research tell us tomorrow of normal morals.” The theatre reemerges with an unrevealed relation with what precedes or what proceeds. The ongoing drafting steps ruins every possible connotation, and what the reader could relate before fails this time. The insertion of three different parties in one sentence; “when you were alive they called him a stooge,” two of which are not previously introduced, is quite misleading and confusing. Yet, it redirects the reader to that path of faith in which things happen in a certain way for a certain reason of which one may have no knowledge. Ashbery’s writings always seem as undetermined moves stuffed with juxtaposed contradictions and mysterious references as “called him/whom d’ya know/their accomplishments,” nevertheless, they are able of creating binary logic and increasing possibilities. The frequent switching of place settings causes the reader to take longer to respond, ensuring focus and careful study of the acts involved or any generated relationships between them. It has the same effect of “essence theory”² that has been adapted in drama, “to conceptualize essence (intrinsic) rather than appearance ‘extrinsic’” (Der Walt 10).

The constant back-and-forth between the speaker (“I’ll bring you,” “I’ll just hit,” “when you get back”) and the interlocutor (“Take a Brooklyn family,” “when you get back”) is logical, especially since the former establishes the reader’s steps in the latter chain of stories for a conclusion that is satisfactory to both parties. Yet, in the third stanza a third party steps in with not the least introduction, as a part of the incremental permutation process. In this stanza changes have no rhythm and even settings of time deviate consistently. The poem starts with a future anticipating question, then shifts to a recalling of past memories, then the third stanza comes with a confusing rounding up of all tenses; future “will keep on … ,” present “Ottomans, now … ” and past “had a little … ”. Here, permutation adopts a new dimension and gradually invades time settings in addition to previously altered place settings. However, there is a connection between all of these tenses, and the significance is astounding: sight. In his book Change and Renewal in Children’s Literature Thomas Van der Walt points out that: “drawing up of past time into present, or reaching out from present to past, these texts also make seeable other, equally complex abstractions, such as nostalgia, regret, hope, yearning, and sorrow; all of which are related to time and its immutability” (Walt, 2004, p. 10). He further adds that “the challenge … is to explore how this process works and to describe it creatively” (Walt, 2004, p. 10). This is where Ashbery’s craft lies, in using incremental permutation to get the best of language out. Through a blend of diverse tenses the reader is given a unique chance to experience hope in the opening line of the poem and equally in every opening line of the successive stanzas, nostalgia in “I used to climb … that was funny yet unbidden,” “we walked all the way here … ,” apostrophe in the fourth stanza “O melted butter;” sorrow in “the devalued son looks up other people’s calisthenics, like that’s going to change anything,” and regret in “who you walk along in grayness, against.” Der Walt explains:

With change can come grief, loss, mortality, and absence rather than presence-absence “traced” by presence in a photograph. In a very simple format- juxtapositions of past and present tense in the verbal text … time and its inexorability and “sad mortality” are made seeable. (11)

Although the poem concludes with a two-line stanza with a single word in the final line, the reader is not surprised by the conclusion. However, the title is. With a title that remains a mystery even after reading the entire poem, Ashbery raises a few more questions than the more common use of paraprosdokian to describe a surprise conclusion. The conclusion is nonetheless disappointing since, despite effectively expressing the poem’s core theme in the phrase “the salt lost its savior,” it is unable to comprehend the hard title. In contrast, “Seven-Year Old Auroch Likes This” only serves to exacerbate the poem’s enigma rather than help solve it. The reader is neither introduced nor led on his trip afterword by the title. However, it would be a grave error to disregard the title’s significance or consider it to be of secondary importance. However, it is secure enough for the reader to assume that the title was added after the poem itself and that its obscurity eventually supports his rudimentary, unsupported assertion that the poem lacks a clear, set direction. According to Mary Elizabeth Vaquer’s book Poetics of Curriculum, Poetics of Life: An Exploration of Poetry in the Context of Selves, Schools, and Society, the title was likely produced as the poem’s last stage: “Writing a title before the work has been written is usually too restrictive- the writer may feel constricted by the boundaries and expectations that the title demands of the work” (95). Still emerging are further possible analyses of the title. Irrelevance in this context may imply a poetic substitute for a nonexistent title and in this situation it suggests an incomplete work or a blank canvas for the reader to develop his own unbiased interpretation without the poet’s interference: “the poem can represent for each reader a unique interpretation, unfettered by the suggestion implied by a title. (The) words guide the reader along the road, but the reader chooses his or her exists” (Vaquer, 2016, p. 95).

A similar finding from a geometric analysis of the permutation processes in the poem is that the reader, and not the speaker, is responsible for integrating a meaningful whole. Not the engagement of his readers in the process of understanding his poems, but rather the manner and level of this inclusion, is what Ashbery brings to the poetry genre as novel. When it comes to Ashbery’s poetry, readers are not just readers; they are also editors who participate in the revision process to produce a meaningful whole.

6. Graphosyntatic effect

Teun Adrianus Van Dijk defines graphosyntatic permutation as “the transportation of phrase element, on the prosodosyntatic level, to an enjambment” (Dijk, 1985, 79), and in Literary Rhetoric: Concepts- Structures- Analyses Heinrich F. Plett gives examples of graphosyntax as “(comma, semicolon, full stop)” (Plett, 2010, p. 254). Researchers have employed graphology on an individual basis to relate language to its users and to identify key traits of their personalities. Graphology was employed to reveal speeches’ true objectives on the basis of this. The combination of graphology with syntax serves the same aim but does so in a different way. This is accomplished by making special use of linguistic syntax elements, particularly phrase elements, as described by Dijk, or the comma, semicolon, and full stop as stated by Plett. The investigations of the graphosyntax for the permutations revealed in Ashbery’s poetry in all of their manifestations reveal significant conclusions. In comparison to other poems like “Late Echo,” “The Idiot,” “My Erotic Double” among others, “Chinese Fire Drill” appears suited for the study of graphosyntactic permutation:

Ok, I said it. Sarabande. A dance no one dances anymore.

Except maybe in heaven, where they don’t have better things to

do. These clucks behind a fence … Now, of course, I’ll have

passed it on differently. They’re here, instead of just wondering

what they’re doing. Gotta keep the red onion.

You move a lot in a cab. Not to stand up and eat their

community. A few scheduling disasters later the daughters

came down to lift us off the shore. We were branded with the

name lot—

the most mutable among us augment the mystery beyond all

proportion, so as to accept the thanks that in gratitude inevitably

trails in its wake. For whatever reason. (Ashbery, , 2015, p. 9)

Permutation takes the shape of scrambled punctuation marks in this poem for added impact. Some of Ashbery’s sentences contain additional clauses, as in “Sarabande,” “a dance no one dances anymore,” and other lines are essentially incomplete ideas with missed punctuation marks. Consider the first line of the second stanza, where a comma should be placed between “cab” and “not”. Instead, a misplaced full stop breaks that line into two identical morphological parts. The two portions are equivalent in both effect and number of morphemes. The phrase “Chinese Fire Drill,” which can be interpreted symbolically in two distinct ways, is represented by the first half. The first is switching seats when a car is stopped at a light. The second is that it might allude to misunderstandings and confusion brought on by inadequate directions or policies. The second half of that statement is then left out in order to draw attention to any metaphorical connotations of the first; too much thought about what is happening can lead to social protest. “You move a lot in a cab” then indicates change of point of view, handling a certain issue from a different perspective, or freeing oneself of the harsh fetters of life. The use of punctuation marks is intended to highlight the poem’s primary messages as subtitles, and what follows is elaboration.

The entire poem reads more like prose written in poetry lines, with various possible causes for such irregularities, one of which is to give the text a poetic sense. This suggestion is bolstered further by the overuse of “enjambment.” Each line goes into the next, combining segments to form a segmented whole, which is most likely another reason for choosing that technique. It keeps the reader’s complete attention and forces him to read the poem carefully till the end. Each line draws the reader to the next one in an unbreakable chain: “the closure of the metrical pattern at line end implies a pause, while the incompletion of the phrase says to go on” (Greene 99). The run-on sentences, besides, lend life to the poem as contrasted with the end-stopped lines. According to B. Ten Brink in his book The Language and Metre of Chaucer, the purpose achieved by enjambment in lines is that it gives life to poetry: “(Enjambment) is an indispensable device for the animation of poetical speech and the avoidance of monotony” (Brink, 1969, p. 226). And incorporating death themes is utterly unacceptable for a poet who preaches relativity as a general concern. Furthermore, enjambment produces one of the fundamental parts of prosodographic equivalences, which is comparable or identical line lengths: “the following prosodographic equivalences result from permutative operations: 1- identity of line lengths … ” (Dijk, 1985, p. 79). Each line in the poem is of 12–14 morphemes, the thing that strongly anchors the above argument that Ashbery wants to convey an idea of relativity.

In “Alms for the Beekeeper” (Ashbery, 2014, Poetry 400), graphosyntactic permutation predominates because the speaker heavily employed syntactic permutation and amplified the entropic impact with a limited number of punctuation marks that blatantly fail to aid the reader in understanding the proper flow of the poem. The poem goes like this:

He makes better errors that way.

Pass it around at breakfast:

the family and all, down there with a proximate sense of power,

lawyering up. Less log-heavy, your text-strategy

beat out other options, is languid.

Duets in the dust start up,

begin. Again.

He entered the firm at night.

The 26^th is a Monday. (Ashbery, 2014, Poetry 400)

An extensive graphosyntactic permutation of whole phrases and explanations can be found in the string that follows the first line. As a result, the speaker uses a colon after “breakfast” to indicate a later explanation in the phrase “pass it around at breakfast:/the family and all, down there with a proximate sense of power,/lawyering up,” even though the next phrase is syntactically incorrect and suggests that the previous punctuation mark was misused. A hyphen appears to be used in a bidirectional process of degrammation of “log” and “text” from nouns into adjectives, and “heavy” into a noun. Otherwise, it appears that the hyphen is being misused in these instances and has no clear function or meaning. The peculiar use of punctuation marks continues till the end, causing commas, colons, and full stops to become entropic. This entropy of punctuation, together with the ongoing shift in the addressee, agrees with the syntactic permutation of complicated structures and irrelevant ideas.

It is noteworthy, however, that Ashbery’s use of graphosyntactic permutation is regarded as less when compared to other poets whose works are rich in this element, such as E.E. Cumming’s first poem from his anthology of lyrics 95 Poems, which employs graphosyntactic permutation in a very complex manner. The cautious use of graphosyntactic permutation in Ashbery’s poems, which already feature a great deal of time and place permutation, is fitting so as not to complicate the text more.

More about Ashbery’s personality and the true purposes of his writings can be learned from his graphosyntax. Although the poem’s long sentences are its primary distinguishing feature, the ends of the two stanzas are extremely compressed lines that may or may not have grammatical significance. They are blatant signs of effort weariness in psychology. The poet has finished speaking and doesn’t need to further explain himself. On the other hand, the conclusions are stated in such a clear manner that they stick in the readers’ minds and are easy to memorize. This organized approach to writing gives the subject weight and necessitates careful thought about every possible combination.

7. Conclusion

From a clear preliminary stage in the creative process to an endless course whose existence is defined by the composing stage of the poem, Ashbery broadens the spectrum of permutation. The influence of Ashbery is momentary convergence, which suggests a predisposition, which in turn implies a psychological effect, a geometric effect, or a graphosyntatic effect—even when his permutations convert his poems into a tangle of irrelevant concepts and competing thoughts. In every situation, Ashbery’s stratum poetry displays more than only poetics through the variation given by permutation. It is a voyage in which the reader is engrossed in a continuous search for a precise notion that unites all elements and gives the poem its meaning. Additionally, Ashbery’s poetry is exceptional for its entropic elements, which are both structural and thematic. The other intriguing aspect that Ashbery withholds is the multilayered permutation. Ashbery’s permutation goes much beyond the jumbled words when compared to other permutation poets. Permutation in his poems include words, phrases, settings of time and space, and ideas.

The use of permutation promotes diversity and multiplicity of viewpoints, which prevents stagnation and keeps the reader engaged until they can agree on all the chaotic components of the poem. Ashbery’s poems seem rashly anarchic like unfinished poems with scrambled elements and unmade word-choices. However, it is his talent for manipulating straightforward components into permutations for deeper significance and reflective thinking. Instead of being a flaw, it is a distinctive quality that successfully grabs the reader’s attention. As a tool for releasing poetry from indisputable truths, permutation is transformed into a culture of digression.

Correction

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgement

Researcher would like to thank the Deanship of Scientific Research, Qassim University for funding publication of this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rabab Ahmed Amin AbdelFattah

Rabab AbdelFattah is a lecturer at Faculty of Al-Alsun (Faculty of languages), Minia University, Egypt, and is currently in a secondment at Qassim university, Faculty of Science and Arts in Al-Asyah. Her main research interests are poetry, sociology and comparative literature. She attended a number of international conferences on arts in University of London and Paris, and had the privilege of publishing in indexed journals in Scopus, Q.1.

Notes

1. Paraprosdokian: a figure of speech in which a part of the poem is surprising or against expectations. It imposes a reconsideration, on the part of the reader, of the previous or first section to comprehend the whole work. It is as Mary Elizabeth describes, in her book Painless Poetry, ‘a surprising end’.

2. Essentialism is a controversial theory concerning the structure of reality. Essentialists believe that some constituents or properties of objects are essential to those objects, while other constituents or properties are not essential to them. More information on Essentialism is found in Substance and Essence in Aristotle by Charlotte Witt