Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

John Ashbery's "Wooden Buildings" unfurls as a meditative and whimsical exploration of memory, perception, and the passage of time, encapsulated within the imagery of a journey to a small house by the water. The poem, characteristic of Ashbery's richly textured and allusive style, navigates through layers of personal and historical consciousness, blending the ordinary with the profound, the specific with the universal.

The opening lines, "The tests are good. You need a million of them. / You’d die laughing as I write to you / Through leaves and articulations," set a tone of intimate correspondence, suggesting a dialogue that is both literal and metaphorical. This interaction, conducted "through leaves and articulations," evokes the complexity of communication, where meaning is constructed and deconstructed in the interplay between the speaker and the addressee, amidst the natural and the articulated.

The reflective question, "I wonder now if it could have been on some day / Findable in an old calendar? But no, / It wasn’t out of history, but inside it," introduces a contemplation of time—not as a mere sequence of findable, definable moments, but as an experiential, lived reality that is "inside" history. This perspective challenges the conventional understanding of history as a series of discrete events, suggesting instead a fluid, immersive continuum in which individual experiences are embedded.

The description of arriving at "a small house built just above the water," where "You had to stoop over to see the attic window," conveys a sense of discovery and intimacy. The house, with its peculiarities and the deliberate choice of its attic window's height, symbolizes the personal narratives and spaces that are crafted with intention yet are subject to the interpretations and perceptions of others. The light that comes in, judged to be "just right," reflects the moments of clarity and understanding that illuminate our lives, often in unexpected ways.

The mention of "Giving that party, to turn on that dishwasher" juxtaposes the mundane with the celebratory, highlighting the intermingling of everyday life with moments of significance. This shift towards the domestic and the ordinary underscores the poem's exploration of the textures of lived experience, where profound insights can emerge from the most commonplace activities.

Ashbery's vision of being led "upward through more / Powerful forms of poetry, past columns / With peeling posters on them, to the country of indifference" suggests a journey through the landscape of art and expression, where the pursuit of meaning and the quest for poetic transcendence eventually confront the boundaries of indifference. This passage reflects the tension between the creative impulse and the inevitable encounter with apathy or the incomprehensibility of the universal.

The closing lines, "Meanwhile if the swell diapasons, blooms / Unhappily and too soon, the little people are nonetheless real," capture the essence of the poem's meditation on existence. The "swell diapasons" and prematurely blooming flowers symbolize the cycles of growth and decay, of aspiration and disillusionment, while the affirmation of the "little people" as "real" asserts the significance of individual lives and experiences within the grand, often indifferent, sweep of time.

"Wooden Buildings" is a reflection on the complexities of human connection, the search for meaning in a transient world, and the enduring value of the personal amidst the vastness of history and time. Through its layered language and evocative imagery, Ashbery invites readers into a contemplation of the ways in which we navigate the landscapes of memory, perception, and existence.

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