Insect or affect?

This article reads John Ashbery’s poem ‘Daffy Duck in Hollywood’ in relation to theories of the dramatic monologue and the lyric genre. I argue that the poem is meant to make the New Critical model of lyric reading, in which all lyric poems are read as dramatic monologues, self-destruct. I then use the poem to reconsider recent attempts, prominently that of Jonathan Culler, to define lyric poetry in opposition to narrative and the dramatic monologue.