John Ashbery

John Ashbery (born July 28, 1927) is an American poet. Image File history File links Ashbery. ... July 28 is the 209th day (210th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 156 days remaining. ... 1927 (MCMXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... A poet exists within a cultural and intellectual tradition and usually writes in a specific language, but the qualities of good poetry are to some extent timeless and address issues common to all humanity. ...

Life

Born in Rochester, New York and raised on a farm near Lake Ontario. He is a graduate of Deerfield Academy, Harvard University, and Columbia University. At high school Ashbery read such poets as W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and Wallace Stevens. His first ambition was to be a painter. From the age of eleven until fifteen he took weekly classes at the art museum in Rochester. There is also a Rochester in Ulster County, New York; for that town see Rochester, Ulster County, New York. ... Official language(s) None, English de facto Capital Albany Largest city New York City Area  - Total  - Width  - Length  - % water  - Latitude  - Longitude Ranked 27th 141,205 km² 455 km 530 km 13. ... Lake Ontario seen from near Wolcott, New York Lake Ontario (French: lac Ontario), bounded on the north by Ontario and on the south by Ontarios Niagara Peninsula and by New York State, is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. ... Deerfield Academy is a prep school located in Deerfield, Massachusetts. ... Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ... Columbia University is a private university in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City and a member of the Ivy League. ... Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1939 Wystan Hugh Auden (February 21, 1907–September 29, 1973) was an English poet. ... Dylan Marlais Thomas, (October 27, 1914 – November 9, 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer. ... Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American Modernist poet. ...

Works

Ashbery has won nearly every major American award for his poetry, beginning with the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 1956, selected by W. H. Auden, for his first collection, Some Trees. His early work shows the influence of W. H. Auden, Wallace Stevens, Boris Pasternak, and many of the French surrealists (his translations from French literature are numerous). In the late 1950s, the critic John Bernard Myers categorized the common traits of Ashbery's avant-garde poetry, as well as that of Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara, James Schuyler, Barbara Guest, Kenward Elmslie and others, as constituting a "New York School." Ashbery then wrote two collections while in France, The Tennis-Court Oath and Rivers and Mountains, before returning to New York to write The Double-Dream of Spring. The seventies transformed Ashbery from an obscure avant-garde experimentalist into one of America's most important (though also most controversial) poets. After the publication of Three Poems (Ashbery's own favourite collection), Ashbery in 1975 picked up all three major American poetry prizes for his Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. 1977's reinforced Ashbery's reputation, as did and As We Know in 1979. Ashbery had become a central figure in American, and English-language poetry in the eighties and nineties, as a number of imitators evidenced. His own poetry was accused of a staleness in this period, but books like A Wave and the later And the Stars Were Shining, particularly in their long poems, show an unmistakably original and great poet in practice. The Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition is an annual event of Yale University Press aiming to publish the first collection of a promising American poet. ... 1956 (MCMLVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Christopher Isherwood (left) and W.H. Auden (right), photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1939 Wystan Hugh Auden (February 21, 1907 – September 29, 1973) was an English poet, often cited as one of the most influential of the 20th century. ... Christopher Isherwood (left) and W.H. Auden (right), photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1939 Wystan Hugh Auden (February 21, 1907 – September 29, 1973) was an English poet, often cited as one of the most influential of the 20th century. ... Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American Modernist poet. ... Boris Pasternak (1890-1960). ... Surrealism is an artistic movement and an aesthetic philosophy that aims for the liberation of the mind by emphasizing the critical and imaginative powers of the subconscious. ... A work similar to Marcel Duchamps Fountain Avant garde (written avant-garde) is a French phrase, one of many French phrases used by English speakers. ... Kenneth Koch (27 February 1925 - 6 July 2002) was an American poet, playwright, and professor, active from the 1950s until his death at age 77. ... Francis Russell OHara (June 27, 1926–July 25, 1966) was an American poet who, along with John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch, was a key member of what was known as the New York School of poetry. ... James Schuyler (9 November 1923 – 12 April 1991) was an American poet. ... Barbara Guest (born 1920) is an American poet and critic who is frequently associated with the New York School. ... The New York School was an informal group of American poets and painters active in 1950s New York City. ...

Ashbery's works are characterized by a free-flowing, often disjunctive syntax, extensive linguistic play, often infused with considerable humor, and a prosaic, sometimes disarmingly flat or parodic tone. The play of the human mind is the subject of a great many of his poems. Ashbery also has written art criticism, collected in "Reported Sightings." He has written three plays and, with James Schuyler, the novel "A Nest of Ninnies." Ashbery's Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University were published as "Other Traditions" in 2000. He currently is the Charles P. Stevenson, Jr. Professor at Bard College and is the poet laureate of New York state. To meet Wikipedias quality standards and appeal to a wider international audience, this article may require cleanup. ... James Schuyler (9 November 1923 – 12 April 1991) was an American poet. ... This article is about the year 2000. ... Bard College For other meanings of the word Bard, see Bard (disambiguation). ... Many US states have posts occupied by prominent poets and entitled Poet Laureate of . ...

Influences

• W.H. Auden
• Wallace Stevens
• Raymond Roussel
• John Clare

Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1939 Wystan Hugh Auden (February 21, 1907–September 29, 1973) was an English poet. ... Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American Modernist poet. ... Raymond Roussel (Paris, January 20, 1877–Palermo, July 14, 1933) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, musician, chess enthusiast, neurasthenic, homosexual, drug addict, and probable suicide. ... John Clare (July 13, 1793 - May 20, 1864), English poet, in his time commonly known as the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet, the son of a farm labourer, was born at Helpston near Peterborough. ...

Bibliography

• Some Trees
• The Tennis Court Oath
• Rivers and Mountains
• The Double Dream of Spring
• Three Poems
• Vermont Notebook
• Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award)
• Houseboat Days
• As We Know
• Shadow Train
• A Wave (awarded the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the Bollingen Prize by Yale University)
• April Galleons
• Flow Chart
• And the Stars Were Shining
• Hotel Lautréamont
• Girls on the Run (a book-length poem inspired by the work of artist Henry Darger)
• Can You Hear, Bird?
• Wakefulness
• Your Name Here
• Chinese Whispers
• Where Shall I Wander

The Pulitzer Prize is an American award regarded as the highest honor in print journalism, literary achievements, and musical compositions. ... The National Book Awards is the most important literary prize in the United States, presented annually for the best books by living U.S. citizens published in the U.S. The awards have been presented since 1950 in at least one category, and is presently awarded in each of four... The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) is an American association of approximately seven hundred book reviewers. ... Established in 1975, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize is (currently) a $25,000 award recognizing the most outstanding book of poetry published in the United States in the previous year. ... The Bollingen Prize, awarded every two years by the Bollingen Foundation, is a prestigious literary honor bestowed on a poet in recognition of the best book of new verse within the last two years, or for lifetime achievement. ... Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. ... Comte de Lautréamont is a pseudonym for Isidore Lucien Ducasse (Montevideo, Uruguay, April 4, 1846 - Paris, November 24, 1870), an Uruguayan poet and writer. ... Henry Darger (April 12?, 1892–April 13, 1973) was a reclusive American writer and illustrator who worked as a janitor in the Chicago, Illinois area. ...

External links

• The Ashbery Resource Center
• John Ashbery at EPC
• John Ashbery--the Academy of American Poets
• The Guggenheim Museum and "Litany" by John Ashbery or "A multidimensional set of radically discontinuous realities" (Richard Sennett)
• Criticism of Ashbery’s Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape
• Normalizing John Ashbery by Marjorie Perloff
• Still Time for Surprises: John Ashbery's Recent Books by Marjorie Perloff