Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

John Ashbery's "One Thing That Can Save America" grapples with the sprawling question of what lies at the core of the American identity, along with the existential uncertainties that come with life itself. The poem opens with a questioning of "centralities" - orchards, urban forests, rustic plantations, place names - and whether these can offer an essential narrative or image of America. These landscapes, however scenic, "beat themselves into eyes which have had enough," suggesting a sort of scenic fatigue, a weariness towards the American idylls that no longer satiate the quest for meaning. In a way, these landscapes symbolize the token narratives that often get conflated with national identity, but the "juice is elsewhere" for Ashbery.

This elsewhere, as hinted, is more abstract and indefinable. The speaker ponders about a morning, walking out of a room, "crosshatched with/Backward and forward glances," implying that there is an inner terrain of memories, moods, and personal history that shapes his 'version of America.' The backward and forward glances seem to signify a grappling with time - the past and the uncertain future - and this is connected to the larger existential questions posed in the poem.

A crucial element in the poem is the private nature of personal experiences, "snapped-off perceptions of things as they come to me." These private turns of events, according to the speaker, seem to determine whether "we shall be known," and whether "our fate can be exemplary, like a star." This infuses a sense of individual destiny into the notion of America, implying that the larger story of a nation is woven from these private, small, and often incomprehensible threads of individual lives.

And yet, the speaker seems to undermine his own argument by acknowledging that all these private perceptions and events are still waiting for something - "a letter that never arrives." It's a beautiful metaphor for existential anxiety, capturing the persistent human longing for a message or sign that will give shape and meaning to life. This message is both timely and timeless, "wise, and seemingly/Dictated a long time ago," indicating the eternal nature of human questions about purpose and destiny.

Finally, the poem leaves us with a sense of mundane realities - "cool yards," "quiet small houses in the country," "fenced areas," and "cool shady streets." It seems to suggest that perhaps the answer to the larger questions - about America or existence - resides in these simple, everyday spaces. In the same way that we must engage with the limitations and possibilities of everyday life to discover our personal fates, so too must we engage with the complexities of America's manifold landscapes and histories to understand its identity.

"One Thing That Can Save America" leaves us not with an answer but with a space for continued questioning, a territory where the unresolved can coexist with the definitive, where grand national identities can be both questioned and constructed anew, and where existential angst can give way to a resigned acceptance of life's uncertainties.

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