John Ashbery, whose birthday is tomorrow, has been an important figure for several generations of Australian poets. This influence was acknowledged by the poet Michael Farrell, who in 2019 edited an anthology of Ashbery inspired Australian poetry, Ashbery Mode. With over sixty poems, of whose poets span fifty years, the anthology is as much a testament to Ashbery’s range (both form and tone) and durability as it is to his inimitability.
The anthology includes a sestina, a pantoum, and poets as various as John Tranter, Jordie Albiston, Bella Li, John Kinsella, Gig Ryan, Ken Bolton, Laurie Duggan, John Jenkins, Kate Lilley and Toby Fitch. Despite his tremendous influence, Ashbery remains, as Farrell points out in his introduction, a “largely underground phenomenon” in Australia, someone who is “read by, and recommended by, poets to each other” but whose poetry isn’t taught in schools and cannot be found in bookstores.
In America, of course, Ashbery has achieved the extraordinary feat of being appreciated by both the avant-garde and the mainstream, with The Tennis Court Oath, which turns sixty this year, perhaps the only collection not to make the crossover, its experimental cut ups lacking in popular appeal.
Ashbery Mode features an ode to the collection, “Tennis Court Ode”, by Hazel Smith. The poem opens with the great line “you can join in any conversation without really knowing the score” which seems to me perfectly to characterize Ashbery’s poetry, which so often meets us mid-conversation, or disrupts thought and, without any bearing, we are happily taken away on a meandering tour of digressions and distractions towards expectant revelations that seem never to arrive, or never arrive in full.
“Tennis Court Ode” ends with another brilliant line, “a voice from the convex mirror shouts ‘he’s the John Ashbery of tennis!’” As someone who considers himself a fairly knowledgeable tennis fan, this one had me stuck. Who, of all players past and present, could be considered ‘the John Ashbery of tennis’? Rod Laver, an Australian, perhaps?
Tennis Court Ode
you can join in any conversation without really knowing the score
the garlic on the ghost’s breath was deposited on the letters
push back the boats they cry from the decks of miscarrying vessels
a foetus sticks its head out and then retires to fallopian bliss
that which is salient I have found is usually that which is hidden
as dementia starts to cut its teeth, secrets begin to throw racquets
a technician unplugs the autocue as an aid to the autoerotic
he made others feel he was dependent on them even though he wasn’t
off-shore processing, onshore protests, people smuggling poetics
writing becomes like death row with stochastic bouts of remission
sometimes he said I find myself not liking people who everyone seems to admire
the doctor talks and talks though he’s taken an oath to listen
as a stranger swivels on his bar stool and knocks over the carefully poured drinks
the jury decides it wants to go home and serves a hit and run missive
it’s the time of hanging on parliaments and hung-up prohibitions
it’s the time of backstabbing and net-rushing, of re-combinative commitment
the anxiety of influence, the passivity anxiety breeds
she took the headscarf on and off unsure about metaphor’s limits
as the poem becomes as breathless as an asthmatic culture permits
a voice from the convex mirror shouts, ‘he’s the John Ashbery of tennis!’
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Author: Thomas Moody
