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| | On "Syringa" |
 | | When song rivals the flowers, it turns the "fissure" of quarry into a generative source, "the well of dim noon." The poem presses the point by another play on "syringa," which is derived from "syrinx," the Greek word for panpipe. |
 | | In "Syringa," Ashbery explicitly invokes the myth of Orpheus, particularly the aspect focusing on renewal or re-membering after fragmentation or dismemberment. |
 | | And in the end, he is not torn apart; rather, he is simply used up, burned out like a star, and the poem continues to its finish without its Orpheus and yet with something of the beauty of his example, his fatal trajectory. |
| www.english.uiuc.edu /maps/poets/a_f/ashbery/syringa.htm (714 words) |
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