Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"Wet Casements" by John Ashbery serves as a labyrinthine journey through the complexities of self-perception, interpersonal understanding, and the constant desire for knowledge that remains perpetually out of reach. It opens with a brief scene from Kafka's "Wedding Preparations in the Country," where Eduard Raban perceives rain. This inclusion immediately strikes a tone of existential curiosity, setting the reader up for a poem that itself functions as a complex "passage."

Ashbery starts by examining the "interesting concept" of seeing oneself as others see them, like a reflection "in streaming windowpanes." This metaphor extends to understanding others' perceptions and attitudes as "overlaid by your / Ghostly transparent face." He introduces the idea of drifting "like a bottle-imp toward a surface" that is ever elusive. Ashbery lays bare the human quest for an unattainable, penetrating understanding, something that would offer the "timeless energy of a present." The use of the term "epistemological snapshot" adds a layer of intellectual rigor, making the poem as much a philosophical query as it is an emotional one.

The second half of the poem shifts from abstract reflection to a more personal note. Ashbery alludes to a name heard "at some crowded cocktail / Party long ago," carried around "in his wallet / For years." This name, ostensibly the poet's or possibly the reader's, becomes a symbol for lost or unreachable information, a talisman of what might have been or could be known. The wallet metaphor extends to describe the vagaries of life-how opportunities and circumstances ("bills") slide "in / And out of it."

The sense of lost knowledge culminates in the speaker's frustration: "Can't have it, and this makes me angry." This anger is then channeled creatively into constructing "a bridge like that / Of Avignon," historically known as a place for dance and revelry. The bridge stands as a symbol of reconciliation and the fulfilling of an intellectual or emotional gap. Here, the speaker hopes to "see my complete face / Reflected not in the water but in the worn stone floor of my bridge."

The poem concludes with a resolution: "I shall keep to myself. / I shall not repeat others' comments about me." This is a powerful assertion of individuality and self-contained meaning. Ashbery seems to suggest that while the quest for understanding others and oneself may never be fully attainable, there's a dignified, self-actualizing grace in accepting one's limited perspective.

In "Wet Casements," Ashbery navigates the reader through intricate, layered landscapes of thought and feeling. His stylistic approach, replete with complex sentences and parenthetical asides, reflects the winding journey of human introspection and the external quest for understanding. The poem stands as a profound, even unsettling, meditation on the inherent difficulties of knowing and being known, a subject as evasive and enigmatic as the "streaming windowpanes" through which we glimpse fragmented versions of reality.

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