Meet John Ashbery

John Ashbery was born in 1927 in Rochester, New York, and grew up on a farm near Lake Ontario. He has authored more than thirty books of poetry, fiction, drama, and criticism, his work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages, and he has won numerous American literary awards for his poetry, including a MacArthur Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and a National Humanities Medal. His book Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. For many years, Ashbery taught graduate and undergraduate poetry courses at Brooklyn College and Bard College, and his most recent book of poems is Quick Question, published in 2012.

[molloyxx]

This is such a lovely and accomplished presentation. Three Poems remains one of my favorite strange objects. Thanks to both of you.

[mattmiller]

The only poet from our lifetimes who will for sure be remembered hundreds of years from now--assuming we are still around.

[ve]

I think A Wave is now my favorite Ashbery volume; the beautiful person you're kissing must take a step or two back if you're going to see again just who it is you're kissing, why it is you're doing what you're doing in the first place, i.e. why you initially wanted to do it. Often, Ashbery isn't obscure because he's aloof or occluded but because he's directly your face, intimate, even embarrassingly too close. One can read Coleridge and learn to appreciate Coleridge, perhaps even really grow to like Coleridge; but read Ashbery and fundamentally change your life, for the better, I'll venture

[Klingstick]

I do not understand this guys work and this did not help

[sonya]

I wish it was over - it's desperately unpoetic