A TRANSLATIVE PROSE

Just as Robert Creeley's early reference to Tristram Shandy provided clues to the nature of his conjectural prose, so John Ashbery's early review of Gertrude Stein's Stanzas in Meditation offers several avenues of entry into his own poet's prose. Stein's writing stands as an important example for the prose of all three of the poets examined at length in this study: To Williams, she provides a model for the determined use of the tactile qualities of words; to Creeley, she offers the model of a sustained and relentless investigation of language, which also takes on the intonation and cadence of incantation; to Ashbery, she embodies in writing “the way things happen,” a special kind of mimesis. And for the poets to be discussed in the final chapter, Stein also provides a significant example and impetus.

In his review of Stanzas in Meditation, entitled “The Impossible,” Ashbery describes aspects of Stein's poetry that recur in his own meditative poetry, especially the three long meditative prose pieces that constitute Three Poems: “The New Spirit,” “The System,” and “The Recital.”