"The Instruction Manual" John Ashberry

In considering my impressions of John Ashberry, I can’t help ruminating on the creative process. I don’t mean Ashberry’s individual technique -- I’ll get to that. I mean the creative process as a force within any living person. I think of the speaker of “The Instruction Manual” as an open character, whose body can be inhabited by whoever reads the poem. I put myself in. The first person perspective of the poem makes this easy. At the end, the perspective shifts to that of a shared experience.
The objective is to write an instruction manual in time to meet a deadline. The act of writing is referred to in the intro of the poem: “I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual” (2). At the end, the manual stands as the final written product: “I turn my gaze / Back to the instruction manual which has made me dream of Guadalajara” (73-73).
The dream, then, must be what comes during the writing. The process of writing conjures the dream. The dream takes over consciousness. The writer is so focused on experiencing the dream that he doesn’t notice he is documenting the dream with words. “How limited, but how complete withal, has been our experience of Guadalajara!” (69). Notice that the speaker says “our” experience. The creative process can be shared by all.