John Ashbery

Selections from the first three decades of the poetry of John Ashbery, author of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award The late John Ashbery was a poet whose “teasing, delicate, soulful lines made him one of the most influential figures of late-20th and early 21st century American literature.” (The New York Times) This important volume gathers work from his first ten collections of poetry, from Some Trees, which was chosen by W.H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Series (1956), to A Wave (1984). The 138 poems in this volume include short lyrics, haikus, prose poems, and many of Ashbery’s major long poems, including “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” offering a beautiful distillation of the first thirty years of his remarkable, groundbreaking work.

Selected Poems

From " I stood tip toe upon a little Hill

Klára Kováčiková 

Where swarms of minnows show their little heads, 

Staying their wavy bodies against the streams, 

Tempered with coolness. How they ever wrestle

With their own sweet delight, and ever nestle......

Of this fair world, and all its gentle Livers 

Spangler of clouds, halo of crystal rivers,

Mingler with leaves, and dew and tumbling streams,

Selected Poems quotes

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