Wordsworth and Ashbery: Two Poems

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses two poems, "The Solitary Reaper," by the English poet William Wordsworth, and "Le livre est sur la table," by the U.S. poet John Ashbery. The writer analyzes both poems in detail and shows how Wordsworth's poem, in the Romantic tradition, stresses the importance of the human imagination, emotions and perception over rationality and reason, by inciting the reader to fill in the material details that the poet does not provide. Ashbery in his poem also omits the physical details of a woman to play with the Romantic notion that imagination is what gives shape to beauty, but points out the sexual fantasy involved in so doing. The writer explains how Ashbery poses questions to his reader to reveal the flaws in engaging the imagination through a woman, and instead, incites the imagination in a new deductive reasoning way.

From the Paper:

"Wordsworth makes the woman less accessible to that part of ourselves that perceives through sight, yet engages the imagination by omitting particularities. Wordsworth does not use any descriptive diction to create an internal visage of the woman and her physical characteristics in the reader's mind's eye. Interestingly, her pose is the only tangible information we gather from Wordsworth. She is a reaper, bent over her grain, singing. Her song, however, like her physical appearance, is indecipherable to the reader. This omission of physical details is aided by Wordsworth overall use of commonplace diction in the poem. For example, the line "For old, unhappy, far-off things" is simple in construction and simultaneously relies on the reader's imagination to flesh out the lack of description of the "things" he speaks of."

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