"Poetics of Indeterminacy"

The very notion of "good" writing is a subjective one and a perennial problem for "avant-garde" writers who generally receive little outside approval of their work. Even Ashbery's ascent to the ranks of "academic poetry" was-and still is-something of a mystery to his underground contemporaries. "Ashbery was even then a hero to most of us," North explains. "However, the idea that he would ever be read beyond this small circle seemed an absolute impossibility. It's hard to remember that before 1976 when he won all sorts of awards [for "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror"] he was a genuine underground figure-and despised by the Academy. The whole thing is still mindboggling."

Indeed, Ashbery's poetry remains recalcitrant even to his most celebratory of academic reviewers. John Shoptaw, one of Ashbery's foremost critics, has defined Ashbery's style as a "poetics of indeterminacy"-a euphemism, perhaps, for the poetry's intimidating lack of structural or thematic unity.

"How did anti-academic poetry find its way into the academy?" Fagin asks. "At a reading a couple of weeks ago I was listening to the trip John was taking people on in his works wondering what the hell they were getting out of it. And I asked John, "how it was that you ever became famous at all?" And he doesn't know, he still doesn't know." Fagin acknowledges that "part of the problems is personalities." North, hardly a household name, will probably never receive the same kind of attention as Ashbery, someone who has become "famous for being famous."

Yet that's not to say that Ashbery isn't a good poet, North asserts; it's just that critics miss the mark when analyzing his work. "They're not interested in any of the early stuff we all love," North explains, "like The Tennis Court Oath." The 1962 collection presents a mishmash of generally incomprehensible image fragments intended to reflect the experience of everyday consciousness. "Harold Bloom sort of dismissed The Tennis Court Oath as John getting through to the real stuff that Harold Bloom can understand. I think it's fair to say that, as poets, we don't really think about critics. We assume from the start that there are certain people that will get what's going on, but we don't have terribly high expectations for the academic audience."

Such sentiments are less than encouraging for the aspiring Harvard critic-or critical professor. It may in fact be that academic impulse to perfect poetry, to make it the carefully crafted product of a deliberate mind, is misguided. "The thing people don't realize is that poetry is not cerebral," North admits, "but, like John, associative." With a carefully guarded smile, North adds those words that any young poetprays to hear: "You have to remember, poets don't always know what they're doing."