I have his collected poems, and I flick through it now and again, trying really just to stem my bafflement.
To utter the speech that belongs there
‘Blue Sonata’
making a poem fit to the occasion of its writing, literary and kitsch (Greenberg’s faked sensations): “To be lost among the thirteen million pillars of grass… And I am lost without you.” (‘They Dream Only of America’). Ashbery’s post modern use of high and low art is satisfying: it is not clear whom he is lost without, even-though each part of that short poem is perhaps disorientated, along with the allusions of the former line.
I’d suppose that the speech of my own poems belongs elsewhere, ideally to ideologically undo high and low orders.
I think that Ashbery’s poetry is great when America is kitsch (and his poetry folds that into the occasion), which might explain how he can even exist alongside LANGUAGE (poetics).