Background
John Ashbery’s poem Some Trees was part of a collection selected by W. H. Auden that won the 1956 Yale Younger Poets Prize. Ashbery (1927-2017) later won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship.
Some Trees
John Ashbery (1956)
These are amazing: each Joining a neighbor, as though speech Were a still performance. Arranging by chance To meet as far this morning From the world as agreeing With it, you and I Are suddenly what the trees try To tell us we are: That their merely being there Means something; that soon We may touch, love, explain. And glad not to have invented Such comeliness, we are surrounded: A silence already filled with noises, A canvas on which emerges A chorus of smiles, a winter morning. Placed in a puzzling light, and moving, Our days put on such reticence These accents seem their own defense.
Comment
Some Trees was published in 1956, but it reads like a poem from a farther future that somehow fell into the 20th century. You will recognize some of its themes if you have read Richard Powers’ Overstory.
[The trees] are amazing: each Joining a neighbor, as though speech Were a still performance.
Do trees speak? There are trees that, when they are attacked by insects, will alert their neighbours. The neighbouring trees, forewarned, understand the message and secrete noxious chemicals to deter the insects. Trees aren’t conscious, but whether they have awareness or minds will depend on how you define those terms. This seems impossible: trees are immobile and too inanimate to speak. Ashbery picks up on the seeming paradox: it is “as though speech were a still performance.”
Arranging by chance To meet as far this morning From the world as agreeing With it...
In my reading of Some Trees, the “we” is a couple, and they are likely lovers. But perhaps Ashbery was thinking of a larger humanity embedded in a global forest. This implied couple seems ambivalent. But about what? Their status in the world? About their feelings for each other?
Then, a message from the trees breaks through to them, saying that
...you and I Are suddenly what the trees try To tell us we are: That their merely being there Means something; that soon We may touch, love, explain.
The trees have been trying to tell the couple that they do not need to struggle, just as trees do not struggle. Lives have meaning by “merely being there”; present and, like a tree, standing upright. This meaning grounds the couple as they “touch, love, explain.”
And glad not to have invented Such comeliness, we are surrounded: A silence already filled with noises, A canvas on which emerges A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
This “comeliness” is grace. Grace is always a gift from the outside; it is not something we “have invented” or anyone could invent. The trees’ transformative message connects the couple to a surrounding “chorus of smiles,” smiles that are silent yet “already filled with noises” of joy.
What a lovely Group of Seven-style painting. Nature painting is the best. Like Andrew Milne's work: https://www.andrewdmilneart.com/new-products/clear-water-lake-i-ii