Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"Rivers and Mountains" by John Ashbery presents an elaborate tapestry of images and metaphors, a juxtaposition of natural landscapes and human endeavors, threading through themes of war, solitude, and the complexities of mapping physical and emotional geographies. The poem weaves its story around a "secret map," indicative not only of actual, geographical terrain but also of the mental and emotional landscapes of its characters-and perhaps its readers.

The poem opens with the introduction of assassins who have marked the "Moon River" near "eighteen peaks and the city / Of humiliation and defeat." Immediately, there's a collision of the natural world and human-made chaos, war, and struggle. Ashbery's words feel enigmatic, perhaps representing the intricate complications of existence, both external and internal. The "city / Of humiliation and defeat" might metaphorically indicate the collective emotional states people find themselves navigating.

The images of "Gray-brown quills like thoughts" and the "melodious but vast mass of today's / Writing through fields and swamps" lend themselves to a reading that this is also a poem about the act of creation-whether it be a map, a strategy for war, or the poem itself. There's a subtext here about how any act of representation is fraught with limitations, subject to the "devastation and dull sleep" that still "Hung over the land."

A notable turn comes when the poem introduces a bird, a seemingly minor event, yet one filled with implications. The bird sits, "there was nothing else to do," a line pregnant with existential overtones. In this simple act of the bird sitting, there's a touching acknowledgement of both limitation and freedom-a motif further elaborated as the poem discusses the waterfall and its lack of resemblance to a "harbor / Full of light boats." It subtly suggests that what we see or think isn't always the totality of what is.

The stanza "Your plan was to separate the enemy into two groups / With the razor-edged mountains between" suggests a strategic maneuver in a conflict. Yet it also serves as a metaphor for human attempts to compartmentalize, to make sense of complexity by division, a process that "worked well on paper" but falls apart in reality. The poem seems to suggest that our constructs-maps, plans, poems-are always incomplete reflections of the worlds they aim to represent.

There is a glimpse of optimism in the lines, "Fortunately the war was solved / In another way by isolating the two sections." But even this solution is marred by its artificiality. It's merely another kind of map, another illusion of resolution, yet it's also a way out-a paradox that encapsulates much of human existence.

The last section of the poem, evoking the act of placing a letter "On the unassassinated president's desk," calls back to the initial imagery of assassins and maps. It ties the personal, political, and cosmic into a final poignant image of a stamp that could "reproduce all this / In detail, down to the last autumn leaf / And the affliction of June."

In summary, "Rivers and Mountains" navigates a winding path through physical and emotional landscapes. It's a layered meditation on the impossibility and necessity of mapping, on the beauty and treachery of the natural world, and on the intricate complexities of human endeavors-whether they be war, solitude, or the ever-elusive act of creation. The poem's strength lies in its ability to evoke rather than tell, to suggest that each corner of its map is a starting point for new territories of thought.

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