美國當代詩人約翰·阿什伯利把對現實的思考建基于對藝術世界的沉思上。他的詩很難帶有非個人化、政治化、情感化的傾向,很多詩都是藝術化的結果,其中尤以繪畫為重。他的詩歌創作與繪畫猶如孿生,水乳交融,但并不止于對繪畫形式天真般的模仿,而是超越了模仿,展示出與繪畫相似的審美意境,其中隱藏著從抽象表現主義畫派提取的對無意識的追尋,文本表面的視覺性實為無意識幻覺的呈現,直接指向現實中意義的破碎和主體性的喪失。

Contemporary American Poet John Ashbery bases his consideration of the reality on his meditation on the art world. His poetry is mostly art-oriented,which is largely related with paintings,instead of taking impersonality,politics and emotion as its end. However,he does not totally depend on the mimetic tradition in that his poetry transcends the mimesis,presenting less the visual engagement with paintings than the illusionary encounter with them,an aesthetic principle instilled from the Abstract Expressionist paintings. In this way,his poetry entails an interplay of vision and illusion,in which the vision surfaced exteriorly underlies the illusion captured interiorly,pointing to the uncertainty of meaning and the loss of subjectivity.