Introductory
John Ashbery is a modern poet with modern practices. The Painter is a poem which is considered as the mouth-piece of the poet himself, a persona. The Painter is sketched with orthodoxical as well as innovative artistic techniques and subjects. The poet "enjoys painting the sea's portrait while other artists live in buildings, paint their buildings and praise their tall buildings. The poem outshines symbolic beauty.
Development of Thoughts
The poem opens with the statement of a painter who is up and ready to portray the sea. Its theme gradually develops from the surrealistic movement, which originated after World War First and Dadaism. It is a confrontation between conventional, static and traditional agents with innovatives, inventors and experimentatives. The poet or painter stands as a bridge between the two. He paints the silent prayer of a child which is picturized through motion only, without any sense of spiritual action.
The poet wants to explore the undiscovered depths of life. But the orthodox artists living in the walled buildings, they want to live inside their "ruined buildings" and do not let others cross the doorway of their old buildings. As they want others to stick to the tradition of the Old Adam.
The Painter chooses many subjects to be drawn on the empty white canvas. He "chooses his wife as a subject" and attempts to sketch as "vast as the ruined buildings" But he is still denounced by the crowd behind him; in the buildings. He, then, tries to paint his soul as a subject but he imagines as if his brush is seized by the people in the buildings. The poet cannot draw his sketches as he is again disturbed by the people of old testament.
He invites other artists to sketch their paintings on his canvas, facing behind the seas. But his innovation begins to fade away and the canvas is left blank as it was in the beginning.
The poet wants to assert the fact that the conflict between old, conventionalists and new experimentatives must be rooted out. Because such baseless conflict seizes the brush of creativity and progress.
Allegory
Symbolism in the shape of allegory runs entirely and widely in this poem. The sea symbolizes for innovation and untouched grounds of life. Buildings are the older and conventional crafts of mankind. It also signifies the un-changed and un-progressed mentality of a specific group of American artists.
Structure
John Ashbery is not a traditionalist, he experiments in his subjects for painting as well as in the structure for his poem. His childish prayer is divided into six sestets, technically known as sestina and the poem ends on a concluding triplet, a three-line stanza in which the core phrases of the poem are placed in the middle and at the end of its mono-stitches which are present at the last three lines of a sestet.
Setting and Imagery
The particular poem is sketched in a coastal setting. The images used in this poem are concrete and vivid. Sea, building, canvas, brush and child's prayer are some images which not only beautify the un-metrical aesthetics but also makes a reader draw his own painting in between the building and the deep sea.
Conclusion
Unlike his contemporaries, Ashbery uses simple diction. His modernity separates him from the 'residents of the ruined buildings'. But he is not safe from their influence. That is why his subject has decided to "remain a prayer".
