June Poem: "They Dream Only of America"
Part 2 of our monthly features on John Ashbery (1927-2017).
Above is a recording of Ashbery reading from Poetry’s 19th Annual Poetry Day, WFMT Chicago, November 17, 1973. Below is the inspiration for the title of Ashbery’s much-criticized second book, which was seen by many conservative reviewers as being “too experimental” for its own good. Though he wanted this image for the cover, alas, I believe it was Wesleyan which said no. Too cheeky?
They Dream Only of America
They dream only of America
To be lost among the thirteen million pillars of grass:
“This honey is delicious
Though it burns the throat.”
And hiding from darkness in barns
They can be grownups now
And the murderer’s ashtray is more easily—
The lake a lilac cube.
He holds a key in his right hand.
“Please,” he asked willingly.
He is thirty years old.
That was before
We could drive hundreds of miles
At night through dandelions.
When his headache grew worse we
Stopped at a wire filling station.
Now he cared only about signs.
Was the cigar a sign?
And what about the key?
He went slowly into the bedroom.
“I would not have broken my leg if I had not fallen
Against the living room table. What is it to be back
Beside the bed? There is nothing to do
For our liberation, except wait in the horror of it.
And I am lost without you.”
How does this iconic lyric from John Ashbery’s second book, The Tennis Court Oath work exactly? It’s one of my favorite poems of the 20th century.
You don’t need to know anything about poetry or theory to receive the poem as mysterious, confusing, puzzling. It is. Mysterious because of its images and the range of associations that yet sound somehow intentional. Are we in a dream or reality? Confusing because there is highly particular information given without proper (any) context. As in, say, a John Cassettes film. Puzzling because of the way the poem is arranged: a sequence of phrases, quotations, overt symbols. Together, the poem is like a series of organs floating outside a body. So where the hell are we?
Let’s rewrite the first stanza to imagine how it would sound if it was less puzzling, more banal and transparent:
Expatriates living in Paris like me often dream nostalgically of America
To be lost among the large green spaces of the wide open country.
Yesterday, at breakfast, my lover Pierre said to me
as we were eating toast and tea:
“This honey is delicious
Though it burns the throat.”
The honey was delicious, you see, but it’s boiling hot! Damn.
This treats the poem as quasi-autobiographical, which is not that blasphemous since Ashbery has admitted two background facts in interviews about the lyric:
this poem, like most of the book it is from, was written while Ashbery lived in Paris and was missing the ubiquitous presence of everyday American English;
Pierre Martory, his lover at the time (and fellow poet) announced one day at breakfast: “This honey is delicious though it burns the throat.”