The Emergence of the Romantic Self in John Ashbery’s Postmodern Poetry

This study attempts to investigate the subjectivity in john ashbery’s poetry. john ashbery (1927-2017) is one of america’s most controversial postmodern poets. his work often represents the new modes of expression in postmodern society, a distorted language and an interest in the ordinary experience of everyday life. his concern is not solely finding a way through language to communicate thoughts, his work instead shows a longing for the past romantic subjectivity which presents a more solid ground for the self in opposition to the fluidity of the postmodern self. in looking for consistency in the experiences of the self while giving importance to the performative quality of language, ashbery reproduces the old romantic self in postmodern terms. ashbery’s poems attempt to reveal the experience of the subjective self as it unfolds but without a closure which is a postmodern quality.