“No figure looms so large in American poetry over the past 50 years as John Ashbery,” Langdon Hammer wrote in the New York Times in 2008. Ashbery was the first living poet to have a volume published by the Library of America dedicated exclusively to his work. His 1975 collection, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, was the rare winner of the book world’s unofficial triple crown: the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle prize. At various times, he was the art critic for the New York Herald-Tribune in Europe, New York magazine and Newsweek and the poetry critic for Partisan Review. More than 30 Ashbery books were published after the 1950s, including poetry, essays, translations and a novel, A Nest of Ninnies, co-written with poet James Schuyler.

Source: thestar September 03, 2017 20:41 UTC