lyric subjects 41The opening of the poem is almost ekphrastic, in that it describes
in detail Parmigianino’s painting, rendering visual art into poetry.
The unusual scale of objects is emphasised in the poem: ‘the right
hand / Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer / and swerving
easily away’ (p. 188 ). Ashbery’s details of art history remind us
that the portrait is a thing made; emphasised by his reference to
Giorgio Vasari, a contemporary of Parmigianino’s and author of
the fi rst Italian art history book Lives of the Most Excellent Painters,
Sculptors, and Architects ( 1550 ). Already Ashbery’s poem points to
the self-refl exive intricacies of self-portraiture, art history, biogra-
phy and their poetic interpretation. The momentum of his writing
repossesses this sense of process and creation. We are told ‘Vasari
says’ that the artist arranged ‘a convex mirror, such as is used by
barbers’ (p. 188 ). The globed ball is used ‘ “with great art to copy
all that he saw in the glass” ’ (p. 188 ). Ashbery clearly delights
in the fact that the verisimilitude that we see in Parmigianino’s
portrait results from ‘his refl ection, of which the portrait / Is the
refl ection once removed’ (p. 188 ). The poem not only conveys
the detail of the painting, but the effect of seeing the portrait and
the impression that is formed by the viewer through a technique
of near repetition. In this way it can be stated that Ashbery’s
poem performs phenomenologically, it grants us the perception
of perception. What the portrait ‘says’, according to Ashbery, is a
naked gaze that is ‘a combination / Of tenderness, amusement and
regret, so powerful / In its restraint that one cannot look for long’
(p. 189 ).
Meditating upon his own craft, the speaker admits that his
attempt to give form to the impression that the painting creates
is conjecture: ‘The words are only speculation / (From the
Latin speculum, mirror)’ (p. 189 ). Delighting in etymology, the
poet paradoxically makes a link between portraiture and writing.
Ashbery has commented that he sees the work of the poet as
‘somehow elucidating a lot of almost invisible currents and knock-
ing them into some sort of shape’.^33 The poem as a consequence
results in the confi guring of ‘a life englobed’ (p. 189 ). Processes
of creating and the act of painting are seen as a moment of
incipience: