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The Painter by John Ashbery - Poetry Magazine

The poem describes a painter who struggles to find a subject for his paintings. He initially wants nature itself to be his subject, but the people in nearby buildings encourage him to paint more tangible things. He tries painting his wife and the sea but finds no success. Eventually his paintings become blank canvases, and he gives up painting altogether. The people mock his failure to find a subject.

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138 views2 pages

The Painter by John Ashbery - Poetry Magazine

The poem describes a painter who struggles to find a subject for his paintings. He initially wants nature itself to be his subject, but the people in nearby buildings encourage him to paint more tangible things. He tries painting his wife and the sea but finds no success. Eventually his paintings become blank canvases, and he gives up painting altogether. The people mock his failure to find a subject.

Uploaded by

moiz
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Painter

BY J O H N AS H B E RY

Sitting between the sea and the buildings


He enjoyed painting the sea’s portrait.
But just as children imagine a prayer
Is merely silence, he expected his subject
To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,
Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.

So there was never any paint on his canvas


Until the people who lived in the buildings
Put him to work: “Try using the brush
As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait,
Something less angry and large, and more subject
To a painter’s moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer.”

How could he explain to them his prayer


That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?
He chose his wife for a new subject,
Making her vast, like ruined buildings,
As if, forgetting itself, the portrait
Had expressed itself without a brush.

Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brush


In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer:
“My soul, when I paint this next portrait
Let it be you who wrecks the canvas.”
The news spread like wildfire through the buildings:
He had gone back to the sea for his subject.

Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!


Too exhausted even to lift his brush,
He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings
To malicious mirth: “We haven’t a prayer
Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,
Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!”

Others declared it a self-portrait.


Finally all indications of a subject
Began to fade, leaving the canvas
Perfectly white. He put down the brush.
At once a howl, that was also a prayer,
Arose from the overcrowded buildings.

They tossed him, the portrait, from the tallest of the buildings;
And the sea devoured the canvas and the brush
As though his subject had decided to remain a prayer.

John Ashbery, “The Painter” from Some Trees. Copyright © 1956 by John Ashbery. Reprinted with the

permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc. on behalf of the author.

Source: The Mooring of Starting Out: The First Five Books of Poetry (Ecco Press, 1997)

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© 2024 Poetry Foundation

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