John Ashbery, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of (among other collections of verse) Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, is often referred to as “a poet’s poet.” This is meant as a compliment; the suggestion is that his work is either particularly pleasing to — or, perhaps, best appreciated by — those who make verses themselves. Ashbery is best described, to my mind, as an avant-garde experimental poet who never met a convention he couldn’t defy. He cast a wide shadow over the poetic landscape of the present era.
As the holder of a master’s degree in poetry from a fine institution and a former maker of poems myself, I should like to note that my own opinion of his work falls squarely in line with that held by the poet Philip Larkin, who when asked if he cared for Ashbery replied “Well… I like strawberry.” Ashbery is not, in other words, this poet’s poet. His work — set beside Larkin’s — feels to me like a linguistic garbage heap outside a thriving city. It seems to be composed almost entirely of the diseased bits cut out of poems that went on to live happy, healthy lives among real people. I much prefer the work of Elizabeth Bishop, for example, who even Ashbery had the good sense to refer to as “a poet’s poet’s poet.” (The most bon of his bon mots, if you ask me.) Bishop, like Larkin, not only knew the conventions of her craft, she demonstrated how well she knew them by (gasp!) relying on them, masterfully, time and time again. (Which made her moments of defiance all the more powerful.) Ashbery may have wished he was as talented as she was; I wish the same.
Poets continue to love his work. Do non-poets, I wonder? There’s a way in which it can be seen as easy for a general reader; because he obeys no rules whatsoever — not even those of grammar — one needn’t work particularly hard to “get” it. You can simply enjoy the flow of words, one to the next, and not worry at all about trying to make it mean something, because it almost always doesn’t. (You just need to know that you have permission to do that, which is hard for those of us who, you know, took composition classes in middle school and had to write term papers.) The lack of pressure to interpret, to figure things out, must come to some people, at least initially, as a relief. In time, though, does it all begin to seem vapid, as if a severely insane person is babbling in the world’s ear? Wouldn’t most of us eventually want to understand something? Or most things? I know I do.
I have been thinking about Ashbery and Bishop ever since I saw a production of Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest at Forum Theatre not long ago. (I have intentionally delayed this blog post so that it appeared after the run of the play was over; I’m not a reviewer, nor do I want to be — I am simply a playwright thinking about his craft.) I have been an admirer of Churchill’s work for some time, ever since my first reading of Top Girls, and I was thrilled to be able to see more of it in person. I’m also a great admirer of Forum, which is one of the most ambitious companies in the DC area. No challenge is too great for them, and they swing for the fences every time.
After the show, however, I found myself thinking: this is a playwright’s play. She’s using structure to reflect the psychology of revolution. The first act’s snippets of story are reflective of the way narrative is thwarted in a tyrannical state; the second act’s outpouring of story is the revolution itself, narratives released from their chains; and the third act is what happens after the revolution, when the long-repressed narratives begin to conflict and twist and reveal both their fault lines and their secrets. How clever of her, I decided… perhaps a bit too clever.
I really don’t want to compare Churchill to Ashbery: far from it. Her work is far more accessible, and it quite clearly conveys a great deal of meaning. It’s rich and complex and vital and — at some times more than others — deeply human. I still admire it very much… but what I wonder is whether it’s the playwright in me who admires it or the theatergoer? I fear it’s the former. I fear that what I’m reacting to, when I see it, is her intellectual derring-do, rather than the ways in which she moves me… because she doesn’t move me as much as she makes me analyze what she’s doing. Her work appeals to the head more than it does to the heart (though it does appeal to that at times, too — don’t get me wrong). I’m not sure that’s good for me, and I wonder whether a non-theater audience would feel the same way.
And yet… there’s also a significant chunk of Mad Forest that reminded me of Ashbery’s work in another way: the second act, which was (I thought) rather too easy. Composed entirely out of first-person storytelling — about twice as much as I believe was necessary (though look at me, dramaturging for Caryl Churchill!) — it demanded nothing of the audience but the ability to sit quietly and listen, and any one of the many stories that were told could have been cut without costing the audience’s understanding at all. (Thus my desire to cut half of them at one fell swoop.) How much more difficult would it have been for Churchill to dramatize (or embody) the revolution instead of symbolizing it?
I have come to the conclusion that Churchill may be (sigh) a playwright’s playwright. This means I am still free to love her work, because I am one, but I will now begin to wonder whether she’s, well, a playwright for non-playwrights, too. I should like to know. I should also like to know who Churchill, in turn, might consider a playwright’s playwright’s playwright — someone like Lanford Wilson, maybe? — because that’s someone whose work (like Wilson’s and Bishop’s) I would surely admire.
I’d agree with this. I always find Churchill’s plays intellectually admirable but not emotionally compelling.
There are moments for me that are emotionally compelling. Many of them, in some of the plays. But in the final analysis, she leads with the head, or I respond with my head. I wish it wasn’t true, but it is.
I find this really interesting especially as I love Churchill’s work for her use of language and structure. Her playwright’s toolbox is deep and varied where many other playwrights hold only plot to tell a story. So does it work emotionally? Sometimes. But I wonder if it needs to always. It is an intellectual exercise and though some audiences don’t enjoy that others  – even non-theatre makers – do. It is clear though that Churchill is not for everyone. And never will be.
As a side-note, I took a poet to see Mad Forest. He doesn’t see a lot of theatre and had no knowledge of the play or Churchill coming into it. In talking to him after, the things he said he loved about the play were the same things I loved about it. So, maybe, Churchill is a poets playwright as well. Â
I love Churchill’s work for the same reasons. But I think the qualities I like about it are the same qualities that make it alienating for (some? most?) non-regular-theatergoing audiences. It’s rarefied stuff, in some sense.
As a former poet, I find your side-note fascinating 🙂
Alienating? How very Brecht!
I admired “Mad Forest,” but not for the formal and intriguing reasons you did, though I enjoy your analysis. I enjoyed its sense of irony and its journalistic impulse. By the way, I’m also a playwright and I was a friend and admirer of Lanford Wilson, who, aside from knowing how to move the audience, was very playful about form. In a conversation once, I suggested that, though people frequently compared him to Williams and Chekhov, I saw him more as someone following Thornton Wilder in his experiments. Lanford was emphatic in his agreement. At the time he started writing, he had had very little direct experience with Chekhov, but Wilder was particular favorite. I know that Albee and Donald Marguies both are also big fans of Wilder, as am I.
I love the connection of Wilson to Wilder, which I find persuasive. I really do think of Wilson as a kind of playwrights’ playwrights’ playwright: the kind of dramatist, in other words, whose work everyone can appreciate and connect with, who rises above formal divisions, and whose achievements are great enough to make everyone admire them.Â
As for Churchill’s journalist impulse: oh yes, to be sure. That she created MAD FOREST the *way* she created it, and with such speed? Impressive, and also deeply human in a very different way. Would that playwrights were regularly sent to trouble spots all around the world and the country to do the same thing… wouldn’t that be something?
I think playwrights frequently are and do.My old roommate just got back from a massive research trip as part of the UN’s Theatre for Humans (http://www.theatreforhumans.com/). Â And certainly TCG has some great grants to help with international research.Â
Yes, there are indeed programs, which I’m glad you’ve mentioned. I’m thinking more along the lines of journalists, however. What if, say, The New York Times kept a playwright on staff to send to the front lines of wars or to difficult peace negotiations or to strikes or revolutions or natural disasters? What if that was part of the regular business of all major news organizations? Of the Department of State? Of big national non-profits like the Red Cross or USAID? That would be cool.
Just looking for new ways to get playwrights working!
I suggest that this is only an issue if one chooses to believe that an emotional response is the goal, primary or otherwise, of a work of theatre. Unfortunately, we in the Western world have been taught that an emotional response is the essential component of theatrical storytelling. If one does not make this the central rule or consideration, one can enjoy not only Churchill, but Brecht, Mamet, Stoppard and a vast array of living, contemporary playwrights who hope to expand/extend/amplify the mind, which is to me, the blend of heart and intellect that can liberate audiences and playwrights alike. If you’re always seeking a specific quality or result in any art form, you miss out on a lot of incredible experiences that don’t follow any specific set of aesthetic “rules.”
For me, the only criteria is whether or not a play demands the theatre as its means of expression. Everything else is weeds.
If I set up a false dichotomoy between emotional and rational responses, I should not have. I certainly didn’t intend to, or to privilege one response over another. I believe a piece of theater is most successful when it engages all parts of the human soul, honestly, and Churchill’s work does that for me, to be sure.
On the other hand… there are certain aspects of that play in particular (let’s keep the conversation focused, if we can) that are much more easily “gettable” if one is trained creator of narratives. “Reading” the structure of the play, as I did, is a rarefied skill, much though we perhaps wish it wasn’t. It’s at least more common among theater practitioners and frequent theatergoers than general audiences, and that’s what concerns me. One has to have a fluency with theater to appreciate her work in all of its intricacies.
Does it still “work” for people who don’t make theater? I think it’s safe to say yes. Does it work as well? I have doubts.