| Abstract: | AbstractThis essay presents an analysis of 'A Wave', the watershed poem of Ashbery's later career, as a Wordsworthian response, in the medium of the romantic crisis poem, to the rise of Reagan and neo-liberalism. 'A Wave' was composed between 1982 and 1984 amid drastic changes to US domestic and foreign policy that aggravate the necessity for a change in poetic stance from the newly 'central' American poet Ashbery had become. In this context, the relationship is explored between 'A Wave' and a poet similarly engaged in articulating crises of social conscience as part of a more specific development of poetic personality. 'A Wave', then, is read as a reading of Wordsworth's Prelude. In this, the particular stylistic issue of Ashberyan metaphor is raised, as 'A Wave', for the first time within Ashbery's reading of romanticism, begins to position irony at the centre of romantic metaphor. Finally, I conclude that the result of Ashbery's wavering crisis poem is a positioning of style as the ultimate determinant of social self-identity. |
