Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery

First published: 1975

Type of work: Poetry

The Work:

For John Ashbery, there is no memory or experience that can be taken at face value. There always exists more than meets the proverbial eye. The title poem of the collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror is considered one of the most remarkable long contemporary poems written in the latter half of the twentieth century. It is an extraordinary autobiographical construction, though not traditional autobiography. Ashbery has no intention of revealing salacious details of his personal life. He is more concerned with revealing what cannot be truly revealed.

The title of Ashbery’s collection, and the poem of the same name, is named for a Renaissance painting by Italian artist Parmigianino, whose Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1524) has been recognized as a brilliant work of art. Ashbery was inspired by this painting after seeing it in person for the first time in 1959. In this collection, Ashbery ponders the nature of self-portraits and what they expose about the subject. He understands that distortion is inevitable, especially for a portrait that is revealed through a convex mirror. He takes aim at what may merely be an illusion, a beautiful illusion, yet not the truth that poets are supposedly in need of discovering. Ashbery concludes that words may not be able to fully describe what the poet senses about the nature of a painting, or about the nature of him- or herself. In a larger sense, then, Ashbery is contemplating how art itself is to be perceived.

In 1976, Ashbery was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award for his Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Ashbery first burst onto the poetry scene in the 1950’s. His 1956 collection Some Trees had been chosen by poet W. H. Auden as the winning manuscript for the Yale Series of Younger Poets program. Since that time, Ashbery has established himself as one of the leading American poets of his generation. He also is an art critic of note, immersing himself in the language of the genre. By doing so, Ashbery has produced poetry that is more dense with references to the art world. For the casual reader his poetry can seem almost impenetrable. For most of his early career he was read by a small but devoted number of admirers. Several critics found his poetry too self-absorbed for its own good. For the poet himself, he believed that language should by employed to participate in a stimulating game of chance.

Ashbery, whose poetry is a maze, an intricate puzzle to be solved, has taken pride in his creative unpredictability and his unorthodox approach to poetry. By the early 1970’s, he had published several provocative volumes, including The Tennis Court Oath (1962), Rivers and Mountains (1966), and Three Poems (1972). From the mid-1950’s to the mid-1960’s, he lived in Paris. During his Paris years, Ashbery absorbed everything French, including the language, the culture, the art, and the poetry. His poetry was dramatically altered by his years abroad. He was influenced by everything around him, including both “high” and “low” culture. Because of the breadth of his knowledge and the playfulness of his poetic approach, the poems incorporate a vast array of subjects. Because he is not tied to any one style, Ashbery demands much from himself and his readership. Taking inspiration from the poetry of the French Symbolists and the Surrealists and from the art of the French Impressionists and the American abstract expressionists, Ashbery built a poetic form that is both bold and, to a certain degree, reckless.

At first glance it seems that Ashbery throws together images with total abandon. It can be argued that chance and randomness play a major part in his poetic philosophy. For many critics and readers, Ashbery had been sabotaging American poetry, corrupting the nobility of what poetry can do. With Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, he forcefully and strategically presents a major collection that is chance personified. For many readers, poems are supposed to have resolutions. For much of the twentieth century, however, artists and writers found the idea of resolution to be a false god, a false hope. Turmoil was the order of the day, and art forms came to reflect the chaos that seemed to pervade life in the twentieth century. Ashbery felt compelled to jettison conventional poetry. The burning desire to take a subject and shape it into a presentable whole was not going to be his way of being a poet. For him, there really was no need to pursue, or to be the hunter as poet. Whatever entered his senses, his mind, and his life became the materials for his poems.

For this unique approach, Ashbery was considered a traitor to the genre. He became the outcast, the bad boy, the poet who deserted the people. While this trend in American poetry already had begun through such adventurous writers as Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens, Ashbery seemed to be taking poetry beyond the pale. While Stein is famous for her line “a rose is a rose is a rose,” it could be said that Ashbery would change it to “a riddle is a riddle is a riddle.” For his poetry, he incorporates the colloquial and weaves it together with impenetrable metaphysical phrasings. Whatever he has come across is likely to find its way into his verse.

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror includes thirty-five provocative and puzzling poems. He opens the collection with “As One Put Drunk into the Packet-Boat.” In the second stanza the reader gets a glimpse into the idea of watching, of being receptive:

New sentences were starting up. But the summerWas well along, not yet past the mid-pointBut full and dark with the promise of that fullness,That time when one can no longer wander awayAnd even the least attentive fall silentTo watch the thing that is prepared to happen.

There is reward in waiting, in standing pat. The reader who fights against Ashbery receives no reward at all. The poems are appropriate for those who open their minds to the possibility of a fresh course.

“Forties Flick” shows Ashbery’s love for the cinema. He appreciates that artificiality can stand in for reality. He is intrigued by images in the dark.

They had gone away into the plot of the story,The “art” part—knowing what important details  to leave outAnd the way character is developed. Things too realTo be of much concern, hence artificial, yet now all  over the page,The indoors with the outside becoming part of youAs you find you had never left off laughing at death,The background, dark vine at the edge of the porch.

In the poem “Mixed Feelings,” Ashbery introduces the “pleasant smell of frying sausages” and instantly reflects on a photograph of girls who seem to be “lounging around/ An old fighter bomber, circa 1942 vintage.” He puts himself in their lives and wonders what it would be like to meet them, but he is not “going to/ Waste any more time thinking about them.” He is going to forget about them

Until some day in the not too distant futureWhen we meet possibly in the lounge of  a modern airport,They looking astonishingly young and fresh  as when this picture was madeBut full of contradictory ideas, stupid ones  as well asWorthwhile ones, but all flooding the surface  of our mindsAs we babble about the sky and the weather and  the forests of change.

The collection’s title poem demands that the reader not look for easy explanations. The poet does not provide a comprehensible whole, and his work is more of an extended jumble in a hall of mirrors. A poem is never less than striking, yet it never provides an image one can trust. As Ashbery writes,

Each personHas one big theory to explain the universeBut it doesn’t tell the whole storyAnd in the end it is what is outside himThat matters, to him and especially to usWho have been given no help whateverIn decoding our own man-size quotient and must relyOn second-hand knowledge.

Even though Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror is Ashbery at his most accessible, he remains a poet who believes that creating a poem is far more important than the concrete conclusions that might be discerned by close readings.

Bibliography

Bloom, Harold, ed. John Ashbery. 1985. Reprint. Broomall, Pa.: Chelsea House, 2005. A solid collection of essays that delves into the way Ashbery makes poetry. Part of the Bloom’s Major Poets series.

Herd, David. John Ashbery and American Poetry. New York: Palgrave, 2000. In addition to a balanced overview of the poet’s career, Herd includes a striking discussion of the poem “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.”

Lehman, David, ed. Beyond Amazement: New Essays on John Ashbery. 1980. Reprint. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2002. Several essays in this edited collection on Ashbery examine, among other topics, his approach to writing poetry, his metaphysical subjects, and his poetic “painting.” Also includes an introduction to his poetry.

Shapiro, David. John Ashbery: An Introduction to the Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. A thorough introduction to the poet that includes a detailed analysis of the title poem. Somewhat dated, but still useful.

Stamelman, Richard. “Poetry and Art Criticism in Ashbery’s ’Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.’” New Literary History 15 (Spring, 1984): 607-630. An invigorating discussion of Ashbery’s poem as it relates to the merging of poetry and art criticism.