The Changing Reception of John Ashbery: A Study of Commotion of the Birds and the Evolution of Reader Expectations

The name John Ashbery and modern American poetry are synonymous. A founding member of the New York School of Poetry and a Pulitzer Prize winner, Ashbery is crowned and celebrated as one of the great newer American poets who have shaped the way we read and interpret poetic lines. In 2016, John Ashbery delighted his inner circle of readers with his final poetry collection Commotion of the Birds. Although Ashbery had more than sixty years in the business of poetry, these fifty-six poems ultimately disappoint. Unable to take the current reader on a poetic, intellectual, or emotional journey, Commotion of the Birds has an aura of déjà lu. In a rapidly changing cultural and literary world, these poems are a relic of a bygone area. This study seeks to place Ashbery’s final poetry collection within his oeuvre. While his Eurocentric thematic focus will not grant him a place in tomorrow’s multicultural academic canon, his homosexuality might.