View source for The Skaters

{{Short description|Poem by John Ashbery}}
{{about|the poem|the equivalent French title|Les Patineurs (disambiguation)|other uses|Skater (disambiguation)}}
{{Infobox poem
|name                = "The Skaters"
|image               = Art and Literature magazine (No. 4).jpg
|image_size          =
|caption             = Cover of ''Art and Literature''{{nbsp}}{{resize|(No. 4)}}
|author              = [[John Ashbery]]
|written             =
|first               = ''Art and Literature''{{nbsp}}{{resize|(No. 4)}}{{br}}Autumn–Winter 1964
|country             = [[United States]]
|language            = [[English (language)|English]]
|publisher           = Published in the collection ''Rivers and Mountains'' by [[Henry Holt and Company|Holt, Rinehart and Winston]]
|publication_date    = {{start date|1966|02|28}}
|genre               =
}}
'''"The Skaters"''' is a 739-line long poem by American [[Postmodern literature|postmodern poet]] [[John Ashbery]] (b. 1927).  Written from 1963 and in close to its final state in 1964, it was first published in Ashbery's fifth collection of poems, ''[[Rivers and Mountains]]'' published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston.<ref>Ashbery, John. ''Rivers and Mountains''. (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966), 34-63.</ref><ref>Ford, Mark. "Chronology," in ''John Ashbery: Collected Poems 1956-1987'' (New York: Library of America, 2008), 998.</ref><ref>The poem later appeared in Ashbery, John. ''Selected Poems''. (London: Jonathan Cape, 1967), 32-62; and in a compilation of Ashbery's first five books: Ashbery, John. ''The Mooring of Starting Out''. (Hopewell, New Jersey: Ecco, 1997), 194-223; and later in ''Collected Poems 1956-1987''. (New York: Library of America, 2008), 147-178. Excerpts of the poem appeared in the Ashbery, John. ''Selected Poems''. (New York: Viking Press, 1985), 71-79 and (London: Paladin, 1987), 75-83.</ref>
==Writing==
According to an interview Ashbery gave to ''The Paris Review'', he wrote the poem largely on typewriter.
<blockquote>
when I was writing “The Skaters,” the lines became unmanageably long. I would forget the end of the line before I could get to it. It occurred to me that perhaps I should do this at the typewriter, because I can type faster than I can write. So I did, and that is mostly the way I have written ever since. Occasionally I write a poem in longhand to see whether I can still do it. I don't want to be forever bound to this machine.<ref>John Ashbery interviewed by Peter A. Stitt. [http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3014/the-art-of-poetry-no-33-john-ashbery Interviews: John Ashbery, The Art of Poetry No. 33] in ''The Paris Review'' No. 90 (Winter 1983).</ref>
</blockquote>
Ashbery later described the poem as "A meditation on my childhood which was rather solitary" and he often associated his childhood not as a painful experience but one of boredom.<ref name="AshberyBoredomSolitary">Ashbery, John. Interview with Janet Bloom and Robert Losada, in Packard, William (editor) ''The Craft of Poetry Interviews from The New York Quarterly''. (New York: Doubleday, 1974), 119.</ref>  Ashbery agreed with that boredom was formative to his art, similar in vein to the statement of Larry Rivers to fellow New York School poet [[Frank O'Hara]] that "the history of art and the history of each artist’s development are the response to the discomforts of boredom."<ref name="AshberyBoredomSolitary" /><ref>Rivers, Larry and Weinstein, Arnold. ''What Did I Do? The Unauthorized Autobiography''. (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 113.</ref>
It is thought by several critics that the title "The Skaters" refers to a passage in British poet [[William Wordsworth]]'s autobiographical long poem ''[[The Prelude]]'' (1805), or possibly to a passage by [[American Transcendentalism|American transcendentalist]] writer [[Henry David Thoreau]] in ''[[Walden]]''<ref>Herd, David. ''John Ashbery and American Poetry''. (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000), 109.</ref>
==Critical reception==
{{external media
| audio1 = [http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Ashbery/08-23-64/Ashbery-John_06_The-Skaters_Washington-Square-Art-Gallery_NY_08-23-1964.mp3 "The Skaters"] (47:53) – read by Ashbery at the Washington Square Art Gallery in New York City, August 23, 1964.}}
"The Skaters" is a puzzling poem that incorporates "techniques such as pastiche and moments of ''[[Ars Poetica (Horace)|ars poetic]]'' meditation"—that is, a rhetorical technique in which the poem is a writing about writing, as in [[metalanguage]]—where "the text is a series of juxtapositions; it’s hard to know if the poem is even about skaters."<ref>jsnjns (blog). [http://jsnjns.tumblr.com/post/1640003291 Getting At Experience: Ekphrasis in Ashbery’s “The Skaters”] 21 November 2010. Retrieved 2 July 2013.</ref>
In analyzing "The Skaters", critic Brian McHale states that the poem "appears to make sense locally" but instead "one encounters an intractable flux of verbal 'found objects,' shifting styles and registers, teasing literary allusions and echoes, fragmentary narrative episodes and descriptive scenes."<ref>McHale, Brian. "How (Not) to Read Postmodernist Long Poems: The Case of Ashbery's 'The Skaters'" in ''Poetics Today'' 21(3) (Fall 2000), 561-590. doi: 10.1215/03335372-21-3-561</ref>
==References==
===Notes===
{{reflist|2}}
===Further reading===
* Ashbery, John. "John Ashbery in conversation with Mark Ford" (London: Between the Lines, 2003).
* Bernstein, Charles. "The Meandering Yangtze. Rivers and Mountains (1966)" in ''Conjunctions 49'' (Fall 2007).
* Kermani, David. ''John Ashbery: A Comprehensive Bibliography, including his art criticism, and with selected notes from unpublished materials''. (New York: Garland Publishing, 1976).
* Shapiro, David. ''John Ashbery: An Introduction to the Poetry''. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979).
* Milesi, Laurent. "Figuring out Ashbery: ‘The Skaters’" in ''Revue française d'études américaines 67: La poésie américaine: constructions lyriques'' (1996).
* McHale, Brian. "How (Not) to Read Postmodernist Long Poems: The Case of Ashbery's 'The Skaters'." in ''Poetics Today'' 21-3 (2000).
==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20210421063137/https://www.text-works.org/Texts/Ashbery/JA-Sk_data/JA-Sk_EdN.html John Ashbery: “The Skaters” from Rivers and Mountains, 1966 – a critical and genetic digital edition]
{{John Ashbery}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Skaters, The}}
[[Category:Poetry by John Ashbery]]
[[Category:American poems]]
[[Category:1966 poems]]