Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape
Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape
by John Ashbery

Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape Themes

Little Words, Big Ideas

Language and Communication

Welcome to the wild world of contemporary poetry, which is often as much about the ways people use language as about how they act. Ashbery pokes fun at the reader's need to figure out what a poem "...

The Home

"Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape" follows a favorite cartoon character back to his apartment. It's like MTV Cribs, cartoon-style. The only problem is that Popeye isn't home. Instead, o...

Dissatisfaction

A thin layer of dissatisfaction hangs over "Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape," but it's so thin you might not even notice it. The complaints expressed by characters are either minor and...

Man and the Natural World

When Olive tells the other characters that there won't be any more sunny days or mossy trees, "Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape" expresses something the reader might have suspected all...

Transformation

So things all started to go wrong when Popeye's father, who looks exactly like him except more wrinkly, got jealous of his son's supply of spinach and his girlfriend and decided to force Popeye to...