The reader is compelled to think about the phrase more
thoroughly since it is unexpected. The speaker discusses the picture first, followed by time, reality, memory, dreams, connection, and art, in a stream-of-consciousness style that gives the sense of an uncensored expression of thinking. These concepts and arguments aren't well-defined, and they don't flow well from one to the next. They are inextricably linked and, at times, conflicting. They combine a variety of visuals that have no similarity to one another. They make references to the artwork and the artist in works by writers Vasari and Freedberg, as well as Mahler's Ninth Symphony and Shakespeare's Cymbeline, establishing the speaker as sophisticated and well-educated. These high-minded cultural allusions, on the other hand, are paired with ordinary references to things like sleep schedules and packed museums (as diverse pieces are presented side by side). These juxtapositions highlight the poem's tension between art's ability to artificially freeze a moment in time and the complex reality to which the speaker returns.
-Nicholas

Expressionism
The style that Ashbery uses in the poem can be considered expressionistic. Expressionism is when the artist/poet deliberately uses elements of distortion to create an emotional effect on the reader. Instead of using traditional methods, expressionists use logical arguments or ideas to realise its purpose of conveying emotional truth. Ashbery’s discussion of Parmigianino’s painting surpasses mere description as the reader experiences the emotions of the painting as if they have seen it themselves. 

-Christelle

How does the poet use literary device imagery to engage his readers?

 

How does the poet reflect the thought of pragmatism and the denotation of dreams?

 

Question 3: (Nicholas)
Identify a postmodern theme in the poem. Explain your answer.

Self-reflexivity- the poet examines the painting of Parmigianino, “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”, in the process of examining the poem the poet creates this poem. 

Question 4: (Sephton)
Quote a word from the poem that would best describe the elegant precision of the "present moment"

The poet uses the word 'lapidary'.  The word lapidary is an action of cutting or polishing a refined gem, breaking it down and giving it a beautiful pristine shine.

And you walk on shaken: was I the perceived?  

Did they notice me, this time as I am,  

Or is it postponed again?

As perception fails, meaning never arrives. “You” have been saturating in language and construction, but nothing has endured. When thought fails, as it often does, elasticity becomes the norm, so the formless is inhabited.
-Christelle

Groundlessness (Sephton's contribution)

Realism in this portrait no longer produces an objective truth but a bizzaria... However its distortion does not create a feeling of disharmony.

The poet describes the realism of the painting as no longer being an objectifiable truth. Rather he assumes that it creates a rather unrealistic imagery of the subject in the portrait. The groundlessness is based on the speaker denying a final interpretation by alluding to the fact that portraits do not convey the true nature of the subject in the portrait but rather that the nature of the subject is regarded 
to be "bizarre".

-Sephton