John Ashbery

"An entertaining and shrewd little book … Ashbery is an accomplished raconteur." -Charles Simic, New York Review of Books The most influential American poet of his generation appraises the lesser-known writers who shaped his own confounding, infinitely inventive work. John Ashbery was the quintessential "difficult poet." When asked to explain his work, he typically responded by insisting that his poetry...

A capsule of the imaginative life of the individual, Some Trees is the 52nd volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Comparing him to T. S. Eliot, Stephanie Burt writes that Ashbery is “the last figure whom half of the English-language poets alive thought a great model, and the other half thought incomprehensible.” After the publication of Some Trees,...

An intimate and unique collection of the work of John Ashbery—a prolific poet and art critic—pairing poetry and art writings with playlists of music from his personal library. Something Close to Music places poetry by Ashbery (1927-2017), gathered from his later collections, in conversation with a selection of contemporaneous art writing. In addition, as Ashbery loved music and listened to...