Paradoxes and Oxymorons
Paradoxes and Oxymorons - meaning Summary
Poem as Elusive Companion
John Ashbery's 'Paradoxes and Oxymorons' stages a self-aware address about language and intimacy. The speaker treats the poem as an object that both reaches for and evades the reader, describing mutual desire and missed connection. What begins as a plain examination of language opens into play, dream, and failed possession, while everyday typing and chatter undercut that striving. In the end the poem collapses distinction, suggesting that the poem and reader are the same.
Read Complete AnalysesThis poem is concerned with language on a very plain level. Look at it talking to you. You look out a window Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don't have it. You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other. The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot. What's a plain level? It is that and other things, Bringing a system of them into play. Play? Well, actually, yes, but l consider play to be A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern, As in the division of grace these long August days Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know It gets lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters. It has been played once more. I think you exist only To tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren't there Or have adopted a different attitude. And the poem Has set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.
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