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Born in Rochester, New York in 1927, John Ashbery has
had a distinguished and lively career. The author of over twenty books of
poetry, Ashbery has received many prestigious awards and fellowships,
beginning in 1956 when W. H. Auden selected his first book, Some
Trees, for the Yale Younger Poets Series.
A New York School poet alongside Frank O'Hara,
Ashbery’s verse is as indescribable as it is various. He has said that he
reads "anything which comes to my hand: National Enquirer, Dear
Abby, a magazine at the dentist, a Victorian novel." He has
experimented with a variety of traditional forms, including sestinas and
pantoums, but in most of his work, he seems intent on innovating new
structures.
Published in 1975 and named for the Parmagianino painting in which the
artist paints a distorted version of himself, Ashbery's collection Self
Portrait in a Convex Mirror won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the
National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. "I
tried each thing, only some were immortal and free," begins the
inimitable volume. The poems from Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror
that have been critically praised and widely discussed include "Hop o
my Thumb," "As One Put Drunk into the Packet-Boat," as well
as the title poem.
Like his favorite poet Wallace Stevens, Ashbery has an
undeserved reputation for being "difficult" or a "poet’s
poet" despite the varieties of living language, humor and high- and
low-culture references in his work. "I am a very gregarious
person," he once said in an interview. "This often surprises
people, because my poetry does have a reputation for being aloof and
antihuman."
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