John Ashbery, in "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," discusses impressions gleaned from meditating on Francesco Mazzola Parmigianino’s self-portrait of the same name and the philosophical sentiments it inspires.  The opposing yet complimentary dynamics of perception’s flow from an objective universe (observation of the real) and outward expression of the subjective self’s musings on said perception (formation of thought and language) is the undercurrent motif coursing throughout the poem--a constant vacillation between inward (Parmigianino’s distant eye, seeing his reflection) and outward (his magnified hand, translating it) radiates as the poem’s purgatorial pendulum of Ashbery’s observations and tangential comments.

Parmigianino’s "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," painted in the early 16th century, is a circular depiction of the artist as reflected in a concave mirror (one-half of a sphere).  This exercise in the capturing of perception functions as a comment upon the nature of consciousness: that is, an objective, limitless universe can only be perceived as a reflection (a representation) from the distorted surface of human sensation, with the self as symbolic center and bridge, and then only translatable as a two-dimensional image (a sign) which by its nature is only a fictive representation of a point in space and time and, thus, no longer accurate.  A good, old fashioned play on the Principle of Uncertainty. Ashbery’s poem takes this one step further; sharing the same name connotes its standing as a reflection of Parmigianino’s work, the thoughts of someone observing a centuries-old depiction of someone observing himself, though Parmigianino’s and Ashbery’s acts exist as parallel exercises…reflections of creation.  Ashbery’s gist, I believe, is that said acts are inherently flawed and their translation doubly so; though entirely unavoidable and doomed to repetition, the act of "codification" is the only way to give expression to the chaos of experience.

Ashbery’s poem reads as a loose series of associated images and notions, a circular river (reflecting the iris-like frame of Parmigianino’s self-portrait) drawn from the almost limitless bounty of language’s possibilities.  Form is a necessary evil for coherence, though Ashbery seems not to place too much stock in it.  He constructs his loose frame of language into six stanzas, each with a different motif sprung from the abovementioned sentiments on perception.  For the sake of discourse, I’ll label these as (1) the reflection, (2) time, (3) the possible, (4) art and genius, (5) the necessity of choice, and (6) creation as death.  These are, of course, wholly arbitrary and merely my reflection of Ashbery’s reflection of Parmigianino’s reflection, amounting to little more than a heap of wordy bunk (on my part, not Ashbery’s).  My logic runs (not quite riverlike) as follows:  the poem begins with the bare matter at hand (all puns fully intended), namely, Parmigianino’s self-portrait in question and the nature of the sign as purposeful (read: subjectively interpreted) reflection of the soul, in transcription, sequestered.  But, "the soul is not a soul," that is, it is a fiction rendered on Parmigianino’s canvas, an affirmation not affirming anything, a reality (the portrait) not reflecting any reality (specifically, Parmigianino’s place in space and time at the moment of artistic creation).

In the second stanza, he elicits the notion of time, similarly sequestered by the image and consciousness, around which time and memory merge "in one neutral band."  The time and image are chosen, the necessity of form drawn from the possible, which is the subject of the third stanza.  The realm of possibilities exist as a dream, given form (always distorted), codified (framed) as a chosen set of lines and color in Parmigianino’s case and as lines of language in Ashbery’s.  But isn’t the act of codification "[s]omething like living," asks Ashbery,  The necessity of consciousness to conceive of the world in limited terms bespeaking of false essences (stereotypes)?  Art and genius (as in the original meaning of the word: a consciousness presiding over generation) is the focus of the fourth stanza; the tension between renderer and observer as the two consciousnesses intersect at the point of the created form, bringing the forgotten (the unconscious as in time and space outside the periphery of awareness) into view, the distortion of reality into sudden prominence, which is what many believe the sole function of art to be (revelation of the uncanny).  I call the fifth stanza’s motif "the necessity of choice" because it brings to the foreground Parmigianino’s historicity, his depicted moment contained and floating along the river of time and space (from city to city), suggesting all signs are outmoded figments of purposefully ordered questioning, the decisions of the artist (the ordered form) in opposition to the universal ocean which washes away forms like waves making momentary shapes on the water’s surface.  Which brings us to the final stanza that the "locking into place is ‘death itself,’" the museum no place where one can live.  The artist’s intent consists of a series of omissions, options made of necessity, signifying nothing but making a nod toward everything.  One cannot know the whole except through "cold pockets / of remembrance, whispers out of time," a pretext for the value of lifeless codification and sequestering which is, paradoxically, a display of vitality: the cycle of experience, thought, and communication.  Art and language are distortions of reality, distortions by a circumventing necessity (an unseen "otherness"), but at least distortions acknowledging that they distort, using convention as "kindling," providing the most valuable whispers from a forgotten place, and bridging the limited self to a universe of selves, forms, and dreams without boundary.

Ashbery’s use of quotations from various sources and references further demonstrates that consciousness is a frame comprising orders and texts from outside the self, continually reconstructed by the subjective perceiver/translator to embody something beyond meaning.  The poem, like the self, is a reflection of other reflections, a shape making shapes of shapes given, imprisoning it, yet also communicating a dreamlike gesture toward the universe we can never know.  It has no explicit meaning—it, like the self, only is.
 
 

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