A Critical Study of John Ashbery's Poem Syringa

John Ashbery is the most distinguished member of the New York School of Poets. His avant-garde and highly innovative poetry make him one of the most unique poetic voices of America. Houseboat Days is a significant volume of poems from the oeuvre of Ashbery. It was published in the year 1977. Syringa is a remarkable poem from this volume. This poem which is in the form of an elegy narrates a poet's relation to the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and how he studies it in relation to his personal loss. This poem can be studied as a revaluation of an ancient myth in relation to present times. Essentially the poem is a blend of modernist and traditional elements of English poetry. Although art is emblematized as an abstraction by the poet in this poem, at the same time the ability of art to transcend mutability is affirmed by the poet towards the end of the poem. The strophic structure bestows on the poem a continuity of thought. This poem also expresses the Romantic yearning of a modern poet for transcendence amidst negation and fragmentation. The critical method of close reading has been employed for the explication of this poem and for arriving at contextual insights. Keywords: Avant-garde, myth, elegy, revaluation, continuity, transcendence.