The Scope of Repertoire: A Study in John Ashbery's Selected Poems

Abstract

The current critical appreciations of the American poet John Ashbery (1927- ) have proved to be ambivalent to consider him as a later Romantic poet or a postmodern avant-garde, whose essential role is to achieve the postmodern project. Many of his major poems include a kind of repertoire that demonstrates a clear treatment of Romantic themes and implications tackled carefully by the poet. His later poems, however, are concerned with postmodern themes like the bewilderment of the American individual due to the unprecedented changes and watersheds the society witnessed. The main aim of this research is to critically examine selected poems of Ashbery to judge whether he is Romantic or postmodern, consulting cues from critics like Bloom, Miller and Longenbach . It is one of the fruitful conclusions that Ashbery adheres to the Romantic spirit but for unromantic intentions. Thus, he conveys confessional themes on one hand and tackles postmodern realistic themes related to the core of the American society in which he lives and writes on the other.