Untitled [Black-Eyed Susans]

The same year John Ashbery achieved international recognition for his multi-award-winning collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, he published an experimental work entitled The Vermont Notebook, in which each of his poems was accompanied by an ink drawing by artist Joe Brainard. Brainard's contributions to the project are strikingly prosaic, taking as their subject the unremarkable clutter of the everyday: a washing machine, a collared shirt on a hanger, a bedside picture frame. Brainard's earnest exploration of the joy embodied by Americana parallels Ashbery's prose poetry, which includes the assertion, "America is a fun country. Still, there are aspects of it which I would prefer not to think about."