SOURCE: Vincent, John. “Reports of Looting and Insane Buggery behind Altars: John Ashbery's Queer Poetics.” Twentieth Century Literature 44, no. 2 (summer 1998): 155-75.

In the following essay, Vincent theorizes that John Ashbery's linguistically difficult poetics mirrors the difficulties of being gay, and that his poems build up to a sense of closure that seems to elude the poet in life.

Among critics there is no disagreement about John Ashbery's sexuality. Perhaps that is because Ashbery is actually a registered homosexual. He came out to the draft board and was exempted from military service during the Korean War (Shoptaw 5). On the other hand, Ashbery, although registered with the draft board, often does not “register” as a gay poet. For instance, the Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse (ed. Stephen Coote) does not include him, even though it was published years after Ashbery's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror won the “Triple Crown” of...