The Balloon Pops Analysis

Shortly afterwards the poet refers to the hand as 'a dozing whale on the sea bottom'(78) in comparison to the face which is a 'tiny, self-important ship / On the surface' (79-80), describing the gesture of the hand as 'neither embrace nor warning / But which holds something of both in pure / Affirmation that doesn't affirm anything' (98-100). There is a growing sense of frustration with the impossibility of reaching the distanced soul within the face of the portrait when, quite unexpectedly, the contemplative mood is interrupted by 'The balloon pops' (101) followed by the almost conversational 'I think of the friends / Who came to see me, of what yesterday / Was like' (104-106). These are among what I would refer to as brief interruptions

Particularly memorable is the third section of the poem commencing 'The balloon pops'. (101). This follows the first section where Ashbery sets up an almost classical ekphrastic approach and the second section where the poet introduces doubt about what has gone before. Referring to the first section, this second section commences 'That is the tune but there are no words' (48) and during this section the poet begins the various confrontational challenges to the artist: 'Francesco, your hand is big enough / To wreck the sphere (73-74). There is relative stability in the first section and an ordered deconstructive approach in the second section, but the third section contradicts and calls into question much of what had seemed to be sure, until there is a sense of descending into a whirlpool of chaos. The 'sawtoothed fragments' (103) suggest the image in the mirror (or the mirror itself) is now shattered. The poet, almost absent-mindedly and disinterested, reflects upon friends who came to see him the day before. After the first person of 'I think of friends / Who came to see me' (104-105) the poet disconcertingly switches to the third person with 'In the silence of the studio as he considers / Lifting the pencil to the self-portrait' (108-109). We now seem to be located in the painter's studio and the poet switches voice again,

A young girl (perhaps the poet as a young girl) informs us that this is her house. There are lemon trees in the neighbour's garden. We are led to a place which we enter before anyone else has risen. There is a sense of the forbidden as though we should not be observing the buttons which keep coming undone on a dress, and the girl seems to be catching her breath as this is happening. The scene may at first seem innocent, almost playful, the delivery warm and colourful with the blue sky (or the blue dress) and the yellow lemons. But, of course, this description makes a narrative of a poem which clearly does not have a narrative approach and clearly contains much more than a depiction of a landscape. Further readings reveal multiple levels of activity and any suggestion of a narrative is seriously disrupted. It may have been summer but for the references to snow and ice. So it seems to be summer and winter at the same time. We seem to be simultaneously in the poet's house in Italy and in the house of the Virgin Mary. We seem to be travelling eternally from the past to the present. The scene is at once innocent and