Buffalo Rising Online

Oct 10th 2005, 12:05am By queenseyes

John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York on 28 July 1927. He received a BA from Harvard (1949) and an MA from Columbia (1951), went to France as a Fulbright Scholar in 1955, and lived and worked there for most of the next decade. Best known as a poet, he has published more than 20 collections, beginning in 1953 with Turandot and Other Poems (Tibor de Nagy Editions). His Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (Viking, 1975) won the three major American prizes: the Pulitzer, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award. His most recent volumes are Wakefulness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998), Girls on the Run (FSG, 1999), Your Name Here (FSG, 2000), As Umbrellas Follow Rain (Qua Books, 2001), Chinese Whispers (FSG, 2002), and Where Shall I Wander (Ecco/Harper Collins, 2005). He began writing about art in 1957, served as executive editor of Art News (1965-72), and art critic for New York Magazine (1978-80) and Newsweek (1980-85). A selection of his art writings was issued by Knopf in 1989 as Reported Sightings: Art Chronicles 1957-1987, edited by David Bergman (paperback: Harvard Univ. Press, 1991). His work has been translated into more than twenty languages.

John Ashbery has been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1980) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1983), and served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1988-99. The winner of many prizes and awards, he has received two Guggenheim Fellowships and was a MacArthur Fellow from 1985-90. He holds honorary doctorates from Southampton College of Long Island University, the University of Rochester (NY), Harvard University, and Pace University (NY). International recognition for his outstanding career achievement includes the Horst Bienek Prize for Poetry (Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, 1991), the Ruth Lill Prize for Poetry (Poetry magazine, Modern Poetry Association and the American Council for the Arts, 1992), the Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize for Poetry (Academia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome, 1992), the Robert Frost Medal (Poetry Society of America, 1995), the Grand Prix de Biennales Internationales de Posie (Brussels, 1996), the Gold Medal for Poetry (American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1997), the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit (State of New York and the New York State Writers Institute, 2000), the Signet Society Medal for Achievement in the Arts (Signet Associates, Harvard University, 2001), and the Wallace Stevens Award (Academy of American Poets, 2001); in 1993 he was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture, and in 2002 he was named Officier of the Lgion d'Honneur of the Republic of France by presidential decree.

Friday, October 21, 8 p.m. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1285 Elmwood Ave. Free/ Part of the Just Buffalo Literary Center Orbital Series