And I believe that the result can be defined as a short story about my personal problems, which in turn reflect all those we have today in the United States. Anthem Is an album “born from the group”: my friends and I locked ourselves in a room, meditating on the events of the world and letting personal experiences give rise to ideas. The sadness of David Baerwald, caused by the death of the poet John Ashbery, gave rise to feelings of admiration for certain characters…

The French Ministry of Education has announced the next English language selections for the “Concours externe de l’agrégation du seconde degré,” a remarkable honor. The French press release can be accessed here, and a bit more information on the agrégation examination here. Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror will be studied in France by a new generation of English literature graduate students, and no doubt lead to a new supply of Ashbery scholarship out of France.…

Drawing on the testimony of many who knew him, including Ann Lauterbach, Karin Roffman, Robert Polito, John Yau, and Mark Ford, Colm Toibin draws on his own memories of Ashbery to present an intimate portrait of the brilliant, unpredictable, mischievous, Pulitzer-winning American poet…

THE SHORTLIST

Four New Poetry Collections Confront Despair With Wonder

from The New York Times, April 26, 2019

“To praise this, blame that, / Leads one subtly away from the beginning, where / We must stay, in motion.” This quote from John Ashbery’s “Houseboat Days” anchors Teare’s latest volume, a book about climate change, apocalypse and grief, but also a book Teare composed while walking. In wandering, his poems deliberately cultivate attentiveness to the motions of mind…

As we reach the end of Poetry Month, you might like to know about the amazing collection of alternative literary magazines that are part of Reveal Digital’s Independent Voices collection. Here, anyone (you!) can browse rare gems like Adventures in Poetry and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. And so, so much more.

John Ashbery in O-blek responding to, we presume, Wallace Stevens: “The waltz no longer a strain/now”…

I first met John Ashbery in upstate New York in the 1990’s when I was teaching at Bard College. John and his partner David lived nearby in Hudson, and we quickly discovered that we were also neighbors in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. John was a remarkable character, absolutely original in his modest yet deep erudition, shyness coupled with bursts of outrageous humor, and his embrace of the American vernacular in all its forms. Countless dry martinis, obscure camp movie reruns with titles I no longer remember, art exhibits and poetry readings, summer birthday parties in July, and dinners cooked together in the large kitchen of his Victorian house on Court Street — these images of shared moments and past laughter come floating up decades later…

On paper, the event coming up on Friday, April 5 at Hudson Hall sounds like a complicated avant-garde poetry exercise. But be not afraid. Flow Chart Cabaret Cinema: A Night of Neo-Benshi is a celebration of collaboration, and of poet John Ashbery’s love of the inspirational and often whimsical interrelationship between different fields of art. Throughout the evening poets will perform over, and enhance, movie clips with the sound removed. Think a poetry reading that’s not stuffy or intimidating crossed with What’s Up, Tiger Lily?…

Da Camera joins forces with renowned American composers and musicians to celebrate John Ashbery’s legacy with works that reflect his playfulness, wit and humor. The greatest American poet of his generation, Ashbery visited Houston for a Da Camera concert during Sarah Rothenberg’s first season as artistic director. Joan Tower’s Holding a Daisy was written for Rothenberg, as was Charles Wuorinen’s Ashberyana, recorded by Da Camera for Naxos.

When I think about it the total simplicity
charms me the way a wreck would, or a wraith. 
Obviously there’s nothing wrong with standing to one side
while the boars brush past, or invoking a ton of nymphs
if you want to: that’s show business, and horse trading
as well. Nor is it bad form to challenge the deity
over pale attributes emitted but never
knowingly received. While there’s a dead-letter office
one should be gradual in assuming and allocating 
blame, lest one’s last donation loom smallest
in the rear-view mirror’s tailpiece.

So that if one day the authors deleted the explanations about their books we might not miss anything. What's more, we would save ourselves from rude efforts and useless sweats. It is something John Ashbery seemed to have clear when he interrupted his friend, also a poet, Kenneth Koch, in a 1965 conversation in Tucson, Arizona. He interrupted him to say: "Yawn." The tense silence that followed that word was the starting point of a brief scuffle…

“He knew everything and always had the funniest gossip. And you could never tell him about a new writer, artist or book he hadn’t already read. I once received an early, advance copy of an obscure new translation of Rimbaud by John Ashbery.

When John Ashbery died in 2017, he left behind more than 30 collections of elliptical, often collagelike poetry, including “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” which won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize.

He also, like most writers, left behind another cache of books: an eclectic personal library of some 5,000 volumes, which will now be getting space on the shelves at Harvard University, his alma mater.

The university’s Houghton Library, which began acquiring the poet’s manuscripts and other papers in 1986, has announced the acquisition of the John Ashbery Reading Library…

Just as the publication of John Ashbery’s The Double Dream of Spring (1970) helped to cement the poet’s post-Tennis Court Oath reputation, the double presence of Ashbery’s papers (at Houghton Library) and his personal reading library (to be overseen by the Woodberry Poetry Room) promises to do the same for generations to come…