482
PARTISAN REVIEW
tion, takes on the tone of the entire "Voyage," becoming substantial as it
"weighs its shadow ever heavier on the mirroring/Surface of the river." The
river's surface tells us the castle-itself a metaphor, a "mere" dream-is
finally real.
Mirroring surfaces, reflecting pools, photographs, movies, mirrors–
surfaces which show us ourselves-are a hallmark of Ashbery's poetry, his
"continual pilgrimage" in search of "what you are." The best of his restless
voyages in this new book, the most reflective and self-reflecting, is the title
poem.
It
opens with a description of the images and gestures registered in
Parmigianino's own attempt at self-discovery:
As Parmigianino did it, the right hand
Bigger tha.g the head , thrust at the viewer
And swerving easily away , as though to protect
What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams,
Fur, pleated muslin, a coral ring run together
In a movement supporting the face , which swims
Toward and away
like
the hand
Except that it is in repose .
It
is what is
Sequestered.
Ashbery's speaker tracks "what is sequestered" through the filiations and
shuttlings of his registering mind . In one sense the poem is a celebration of
that inquisitive mind at the center of Ashbery's universe, the mind in search
of the clues to its experience:
Long ago
The strewn evidence meant something
The small accidents and pleasures
Of the day as it moved gracelessly on.
A housewife doing chores. Impossible now
To restore those properties in the silver blur that is
The record of what you accomplished by sitting down
"With great art to copy
all
that you saw in the glass"
So as to perfect and rule out the extraneous
Forever.
Since the "extraneous" gives life its special texture of life, however
(doing that here through a quotation from Sydney Freedberg's biography of
Parmigianino); then from the speaker's constantly shifting perspective
Parmigianino's accomplishment is also "his/Life-obstructing task":
