Ashbery, John

John Ashbery, in full John Lawrence Ashbery, (born July 28, 1927, Rochester, New York, U.S.—died September 3, 2017, Hudson, New York), American poet noted for the elegance, originality, and obscurity of his poetry.

Ashbery graduated from Harvard University in 1949 and received a master’s degree from Columbia University in 1951. After working as a copywriter in New York City (1951–55), he lived in Paris until 1965, contributing art criticism to the Paris edition of the New York Herald-Tribune and to the American periodical Art News. Returning to New York, he served as executive editor of Art News from 1965 to 1972 and then took a post teaching poetry and creative writing at Brooklyn College.

Ashbery’s first published book, Turandot and Other Poems (1953), was followed by Some Trees (1956), The Tennis Court Oath (1962), Rivers and Mountains (1966), and The Double Dream of Spring (1970). His collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) was awarded the National Book Award for poetry, the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and the National Book Critics Circle prize.

His subsequent poetry volumes include Houseboat Days (1977), A Wave (1984), April Galleons (1987), Flow Chart (1991), And the Stars Were Shining (1994), Can You Hear, Bird (1995), Wakefulness (1998), Chinese Whispers (2002), A Worldly Country (2007), Planisphere (2009), Quick Question (2012), and Breezeway (2015). Collected Poems, 1956–1987 was published in 2008.

Translating from French, Ashbery included selections from Yves Bonnefoy, Arthur Rimbaud, and other poets in his Collected French Translations: Poetry (2014) and selections from Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, countess d’Aulnoy, Georges Bataille, and others in its companion volume, Collected French Translations: Prose (2014).

Ashbery’s poetry was initially greeted with puzzlement and even hostility because of its extreme difficulty. His poems are characterized by arresting images and exquisite rhythms, an intricate form, and sudden shifts in tone and subject that produce curious effects of fragmentation and obliquity. They are appreciated more as highly suggestive and dreamlike meditations rather than for any decipherable meaning they may possess.