A Larger Activity Shrouds It

Abstract

Both Flow Chart and Girls on the Run, Ashbery's newest book-length poem, seek to apprehend this larger activity. And although the books weren't necessarily intended as companion pieces in name or even in form, the new poem describes a sort of Candyland version of the first?luscious and pretty and at least as theoreticaUy or inteUectually successful, though by using differ ent terms in its search and discovery. The vehicle for this poem is the posthumously-acclaimed illustrated novel by Henry Darger (1892-1972), recluse and outsider artist. Ashbery's book at once dramatizes Darger's fantasy world and uses it as an engine for the greater project, the arguably self-sufficient activity of Ashbery's poetry. The narrative recounts the adventures of a band of imaginary girls, the Vivians, who include Judy, Shuffle, and Tidbit, as they run from an immense, mysterious archetypal storm. The first section begins with Judy's exhortation to her companions to escape, her words neatly confusing the dimensions of space and time, setting the stage for the poem's work to make out of them a new sense.