Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

In John Ashbery's poem "Crazy Weather," the volatile nature of climate serves as a metaphor for the unpredictability and complexity of human emotions, experience, and language. The weather is not just a backdrop but an active participant, constantly shifting between "Falling forward one minute, lying down the next." The atmosphere becomes a playground where random, nameless, soft flowers grow, and the "loose grasses" suggest a lack of structure or guidance. People, perhaps in an attempt to understand or gain control, turn these random elements into a "garment," stitching together the natural world in a way that echoes human artifice.

This act of stitching or weaving is deeply connected to storytelling and poetry. The "white of lilacs" gets stitched together with "lightning," creating a garment that is simultaneously natural and unnatural, real and imaginative. Here, Ashbery seems to point out the human need to create narratives or 'texts' that stitch together disparate elements of life, be they joyful moments like the "white of lilacs," or more disruptive forces like "lightning."

The next lines deepen the connection between the outer world and personal identity: "You are wearing a text." This line brings to mind literary theory, specifically the concept that human beings are shaped by language and narrative. Ashbery suggests that the 'text' we wear is a complex assembly of our experiences, memories, and emotions. This "poetry of mud" is not refined or polished; it is messy and filled with "ambitious reminiscences" of a past when things "came easily."

There's a sense of loss that permeates the poem-the loss of simplicity, of an "unconscious dignity" that can now only be approximated "in narrow ravines nobody/Will inspect." These lines express a feeling that something pure and authentic has been lost in the complexities of modern life. The "rare, /Uninteresting specimen" possibly alludes to an original, uncorrupted state of being or perception that may still exist but is so unassuming that nobody will bother to look for it. In this sense, Ashbery laments not just a personal loss but a collective one.

The poem, like the weather it describes, is unpredictable. It leads us through a landscape that changes constantly, from "nameless flowers" to "lightning" to "a text." And much like the complex interplay of natural elements that produce unpredictable weather, Ashbery's poem draws upon a multitude of themes, including human-nature relationships, the complexities of language, and the uncertainties of memory and emotion. It doesn't offer solutions but rather poses questions that resonate long after reading. The "crazy weather" becomes a canvas on which Ashbery paints the ever-changing, ever-challenging scenarios that make up human experience. In doing so, he captures a truth that is as elusive as it is profound: life is unpredictable, but it's in grappling with its uncertainties that we create our own unique 'text,' our own narrative that is endlessly fascinating and irrevocably human.

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