John Ashbery bibliography
 Ashbery in 2010 | |
| Books↙ | 34 |
|---|---|
| Novels↙ | 1 |
| Collections↙ | 11 |
| Plays↙ | 5 |
| Interviews↙ | 2 |
| Academic theses↙ | 2 |
| References and footnotes | |
The bibliography of John Ashbery includes poetry, literary criticism, art criticism, journalism, drama, fiction, and translations of verse and prose. His most significant body of work is in poetry, having published numerous poetry collections, book-length poems, and limited edition chapbooks. In his capacity as a journalist and art critic, he contributed to magazines like New York and Newsweek. He served for a time as the editor of Art and Literature: an International Review and as executive editor of Art News. In drama and fiction, he wrote five plays and cowrote the novel A Nest of Ninnies with James Schuyler. Beyond his original works, he translated verse and prose from French. Many of his works of poetry, prose, drama, and translations have been compiled in volumes of collected writings.
Books
[edit]Verse
[edit]Ashbery published 26 books of poetry (not including his limited edition books, listed below). Most of them are poetry collections, which typically contain a mix of new and previously published poems. Flow Chart and Girls on the Run are book-length long poems.
Translated verse
[edit]| Year | Title | Original author | Publisher | ISBN |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | The Landscapist: Selected Poems | Pierre Martory | Sheep Meadow Press – distributed by University Press of New England | ISBN 978-1-931357-52-4 |
| 2011 | Illuminations | Arthur Rimbaud | W. W. Norton & Company | ISBN 978-0-393-07635-6 |
Limited edition
[edit]The first edition of these works were printed in a limited edition. They are often printed as chapbooks, with each copy numbered and with a set number of signed copies. Many of these books are collaborations with visual artists or other poets. The contents of these books often share significant overlap with Ashbery's poetry collections; for example, Turandot and Other Poems overlaps significantly with Some Trees.
| Year | Title | Publisher | First edition catalog no.[note 1] |
Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1953 | Turandot and Other Poems | Editions of the Tibor de Nagy Gallery | LCCN 2015-657560 | Includes illustrations by Jane Freilicher. Published as a chapbook. Although it was published before Some Trees, most of its poems were also collected in that book, which is regarded as the first (or first "major") volume of Ashbery's poetry.[1] Limited edition of 300 copies.[2] |
| 1960 | The Poems | Tiber Press | LCCN 67-1547 | Includes prints by Joan Mitchell. Limited edition of 225 copies; 25 are numbered, 200 are signed. |
| 1968 | Sunrise in Suburbia | Phoenix Book Shop | — | Chapbook containing the poem of the same name. Limited edition of 126 copies.[2] |
| 1968 | Three Madrigals | Poets Press | — | Chapbook containing the poem of the same name. Published by Diane di Prima's Poets Press. The poem is reproduced as a facsimile (copy) of Ashbery's handwritten original, which includes several drawings.[3] Limited edition of 162 copies.[2] |
| 1969 | Fragment | Black Sparrow Press | — | Chapbook containing the poem of the same name. Limited edition of 1,020 copies.[2] |
| 1970 | Evening in the Country | Spanish Main Press | — | Chapbook containing the poem of the same name.[2] |
| 1970 | The New Spirit | Adventures in Poetry | — | Chapbook containing the poem of the same name. Limited edition of 65 copies.[2] |
| 1975 | The Serious Doll | Kermani Press | — | Chapbook containing the poem of the same name. Limited, numbered, and signed edition of 50 copies.[2] |
| 1975 | The Vermont Notebook | Black Sparrow Press | ISBN 0-87685-227-4 | Two special first editions:
|
| 1981 | Apparitions: Poems | Lord John Press | ISBN 0-935716-10-6 | Galway Kinnell, W. S. Merwin, Liz Rosenberg, Dave Smith. Limited edition of 300 copies, signed by all five authors. |
| 1984 | Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror | Arion Press | — | Fine art edition containing the poem of the same name. Packaged in a stainless steel film canister. Contains a new foreword by Ashbery; a 12-inch vinyl record with a recording of Ashbery reading the poem; an essay by Helen Vendler; original prints by Richard Avedon, Elaine de Kooning, Willem de Kooning, Jim Dine, Jane Freilicher, Alex Katz, R. B. Kitaj, and Larry Rivers. Limited edition of 175 copies.[2] |
| 1984 | Spring Day | Palaemon Press | — | Chapbook containing the poem of the same name.[2] |
| 1987 | The Ice Storm | Hanuman Books | — | Chapbook containing the poem of the same name.[2] |
| 1990 | Haibun | Hanuman Books | — | Chapbook containing the six haibun poems from A Wave. Illustrations by Judith Shea.[2] |
| 1991 | The Kaiser's Children | Charles Seluzicki | — | Fine art edition containing excerpts from the poem "Dreams of Adulthood", which was originally published. Includes illustrations by Eric Stotik. Limited, numbered edition of 50 copies, signed by Ashbery and Stotik.[2] |
| 1998 | Description of a Masque | Limited Editions Club | — | Contains the poem of the same name. Includes illustrations by Jane Freilicher. Limited, numbered edition of 300 copies.[2] |
| 1998 | Novel | Grenfell Press | — | Contains the poem of the same name, written in 1954 but previously unpublished. Includes illustrations by Trevor Winkfield. Limited, numbered edition of 100 copies, plus 15 artists' proofs; all copies signed by Ashbery and Winkfield.[4] |
| 1999 | Who Knows What Constitutes a Life | Z Press | LCCN 2015-657570 | Chapbook containing the poem of the same name. Illustrated by Elizabeth Murray. Limited edition chapbook of 200 copies, with 26 copies lettered A to Z signed by the poet and the artist with an original print by Elizabeth Murray. |
| 2001 | 100 Multiple-Choice Questions | Adventures in Poetry | ISBN 0-9706250-0-6 | Reprint of a poem first published in the January 1970 issue of the journal Adventures in Poetry.[5] Limited edition of 500 copies. |
| 2001 | As Umbrellas Follow Rain | Qua Books | ISBN 0-9708763-0-0 | Dust jacket art by Tom Burckhard. Limited edition in two runs: 100 numbered copies signed by Ashbery and Burckhard, and 900 unnumbered unsigned copies.[6] |
| 1999 | The Recital / Le Récital | Ergo Pers Artists' Books | — | Contains the prose poem of the same name (originally published in Three Poems). Bilingual edition in English and French. Translation by Franck André Jamme. Illustrated by Hanns Schimansky. Limited edition chapbook of 40 copies.[2] |
Prose
[edit]| Year | Title | Publisher | First edition catalog no.[note 1] |
Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1969 | A Nest of Ninnies | E. P. Dutton and Company | LCCN 69-17307 | A novel written in collaboration with James Schuyler.[7] New edition by Dalkey Archive Press in 2008 (ISBN 978-1-56478-520-6). |
| 2000 | Other Traditions | Harvard University Press | ISBN 0-674-00315-2 | A book of literacy criticism about six writers who Ashbery turns to for inspiration: John Clare, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Raymond Roussel, John Wheelwright, Laura Riding, and David Schubert.[7] |
Compiled works
[edit]Collected verse
[edit]| Year | Title | Publisher | First edition catalog no.[note 1] |
Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1967 | Selected Poems | Jonathan Cape | LCCN 97-89583 | Contains selected poems from:
|
| 1985 | Selected Poems | Penguin Books | ISBN 0-670-80917-9 | Contains selected poems from:
|
| 1993 | Three Books | Penguin Books | ISBN 0-14-058702-0 | Collects all poems from Houseboat Days, Shadow Train, and A Wave. |
| 1997 | The Mooring of Starting Out: The First Five Books of Poetry | Carcanet Press | ISBN 1-85754-366-1 | Contains:
|
| 2007 | Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems | Ecco Press | ISBN 978-0-06-136717-5 | Contains selected poems and excerpts from:
|
| 2008 | Collected Poems 1956–1987 | Library of America | ISBN 1-59853-028-3 | Library of America series, volume 187. Edited by Mark Ford. Contains all poems from Some Trees, The Tennis Court Oath, Rivers and Mountains, The Double Dream of Spring, Three Poems, The Vermont Notebook, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, Houseboat Days, As We Know, Shadow Train, A Wave, and April Galleons, as well as previously uncollected poems. |
| 2014 | Collected French Translations: Poetry | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | ISBN 978-0-374-25802-3 | Edited by Rosanne Wasserman and Eugene Richie. |
| 2017 | Collected Poems 1991–2000 | Library of America | ISBN 1-59853-535-8 | Library of America series, volume 301. Edited by Mark Ford; chronology by Mark Ford and David Kermani. Contains all poems from Flow Chart, Hotel Lautréamont, And the Stars Were Shining, Can You Hear, Bird, Wakefulness, Girls on the Run, and Your Name Here, as well as previously uncollected poems. |
| 2018 | They Knew What They Wanted: Poems and Collages | Rizzoli Electa | ISBN 978-0-8478-6056-2 | Edited by Mark Polizzotti. Preface by Polizzotti, introduction and an interview with Ashbery by John Yau. Includes a selection of Ashbery's collages, several previously published poems, and a poem that had only been published once before in Karin Roffman's biography The Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery's Early Life (2017).[8] It is Ashbery's first posthumous book—though, according to Polizzotti's preface, it was "for all intents and purposes finished before his passing".[9] |
Collected prose or drama
[edit]| Year | Title | Publisher | First edition catalog no.[note 1] |
Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1978 | Three Plays | Z Press | ISBN 0-915990-12-1 | Contains the plays The Compromise, The Heroes, and The Philosophers. |
| 1989 | Reported Sightings: Art Chronicles 1957–1987 | Alfred A. Knopf | ISBN 0-394-57387-0 | Edited by David Bergman. Contains selected articles of art criticism and journalism. |
| 2005 | Selected Prose 1953–2003 | University of Michigan Press | ISBN 0-472-11439-5 | Edited by Eugene Richie. |
| 2014 | Collected French Translations: Prose | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | ISBN 978-0-374-25803-0 | Edited by Rosanne Wasserman and Eugene Richie. |
Plays
[edit]| Year | Work | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1950 | The Heroes | Included in Three Plays. Written in 1950; first staged by the Living Theatre in 1952.[7] |
| 1955 | The Compromise | Included in Three Plays. Written in 1955; first staged by the Poets Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1956.[7] The text of the play includes Ashbery's poem "America". The Compromise was published in the one-shot review The Hasty Papers (1960), edited by Alfred Leslie.[10] |
| 1956 | The Milky Coconut | Four scenes from the play were published in two issues of Semi-Colon; otherwise unpublished.[11] |
| 1959 | The Philosopher | Included in Three Plays.[7] |
| 1960 | To the Mill | A short verse play. First published in Alfred Leslie's one-shot review The Hasty Papers (1960).[12] |
Journalism
[edit]Asbery wrote numerous journalistic articles—mostly art criticism—in the International Herald Tribune, New York magazine, Newsweek, and other periodicals. Ashbery also edited the periodicals Art and Literature: An International Review and Art News.[7]
Interviews
[edit]Ashbery has been the interviewee in numerous published interviews. There has been one book-length interview published to date: John Ashbery in Conversation with Mark Ford. Only interviews published in books are listed here, not interviews published in periodicals or websites.
| Year | Title | Interviewer | Publisher | ISBN | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | John Ashbery in Conversation with Mark Ford | Mark Ford | Between the Lines (UK); Dufour Editions (US) | ISBN 1-903291-12-7 | Book-length interview. |
| 2013 | Our Deep Gossip: Conversations with Gay Writers on Poetry and Desire | Christopher Hennessy | University of Wisconsin Press | ISBN 9780299295646 | Interview with Ashbery at pp. 53–78. |
Academic theses
[edit]| Year | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1949 | The Poetic Medium of W. H. Auden | For his B.A. at Harvard University. About the English-American poet W. H. Auden.[11] |
| 1951 | Three Novels of Henry Green | For his M.A. at Columbia University. About the English author Henry Green's novels Living (1929), Party Going (1939), and Concluding (1948).[11] |
Further reading
[edit]In 1976, Ashbery's partner David Kermani published a comprehensive 244-page bibliography compiling the author's then-published works.
- Kermani, David K. (1976). John Ashbery: A Comprehensive Bibliography, Including His Art Criticism, and with Selected Notes from Unpublished Materials. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities. Vol. 14. Garland Publishing. ISBN 0-8240-9997-4.
The Ashbery Resource Center maintains a searchable online bibliography. Beyond Ashbery's works, the site also catalogs numerous other works not included here, such as publications of his works in translation and works about Ashbery to which he did not contribute. Like the 1976 bibliography, this online bibliography is overseen by Kermani.
- Kermani, David; Morrissette, Micaela; Rudegeair, Anni; Hendrix, Jenny; Briscese, Rosangela (2004). "Annotated Catalogue of the ARC Archive". Ashbery Resource Center – a project of The Flow Chart Foundation. Retrieved July 12, 2019.
Notes
[edit]- ^ a b c d e The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) system was not formally introduced until 1970 and, consequently, first editions of Ashbery's pre-1970 books did not have an ISBN. Instead, the Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) is used. Later editions of these early works typically have an ISBN. Even after 1970, several of the limited-edition books do not have ISBNs, in which case the LCCN is used.
Citations
[edit]- ^ Ford 2008, p. 1006.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Ergo Pers Artists' Books n.d.
- ^ Ashbery, Briscese & Kermani 2007, pp. 250–251.
- ^ Ergo Pers Artists' Books n.d.; Storey, Miller & Kermani 2016.
- ^ Ford 2008, p. 1012.
- ^ LCCN 2001-116915; Fine Editions Ltd. n.d.
- ^ a b c d e f Kermani 2004.
- ^ Polizzotti 2018, p. 127.
- ^ Polizzotti 2018, p. 8.
- ^ Lehman 1999, p. 60.
- ^ a b c Kermani et al. 2004.
- ^ Oliver 1979, pp. 16–17; PennSound 2009.
Sources
[edit]- Anon. (n.d.). "[New York School] As Umbrellas Follow Rain [Signed] | John Ashbery | Limited Edition". Fine Editions Ltd: Rare & Antiquarian Books. Archived from the original on July 20, 2019. Retrieved July 20, 2019.
- Anon. (n.d.). "John Ashbery | Selected bibliography". Ergo Pers Artists' Books. Archived from the original on August 17, 2019.
- Anon. (2003). "John Ashbery: Staged Reading of 'The Compromise,' Paris, 2007". PennSound. Retrieved July 17, 2019.
- Ashbery, John; Briscese, Rosangela; Kermani, David (2007). "Three Early Works ['Song from a Play'; 'The Poems'; 'Three Madrigals']". Conjunctions (49): 232–251. JSTOR 24516469.
- Ford, Mark (2008). "Notes on the Texts". Collected Poems 1956–1987. By Ashbery, John. Ford, Mark (ed.). The Library of America series. Vol. 187. Library of America. pp. 1006–1013. ISBN 978-1-59853-028-5.
- Kermani, David (2004). "Elementary Ashbery (an essay)". Ashbery Resource Center – a project of The Flow Chart Foundation. Archived from the original on April 20, 2015. Retrieved July 15, 2019.
- Kermani, David; Morrissette, Micaela; Rudegeair, Anni; Hendrix, Jenny; Briscese, Rosangela (2004). "Annotated Catalogue of the ARC Archive". Ashbery Resource Center – a project of The Flow Chart Foundation. Retrieved July 12, 2019.
- Lehman, David (1999). "A Hasty Note on Alfred Leslie's The Hasty Papers (1960)". In Leslie, Alfred (ed.). The Hasty Papers: Special Millennium Edition of the 1960 One-Shot Review. Host Publications. pp. 56–62. ISBN 0-924047-12-7 – via Google Books.
- Oliver, Roger (Winter 1979). "Interview: Poet in the Theatre". Performing Arts Journal. 3 (3). MIT Press: 15–27. doi:10.2307/3245102. JSTOR 3245102. S2CID 192334390.
- Polizzotti, Mark (2018). "Preface; Credits and Acknowledgements". They Knew What They Wanted: Poems and Collages. By Ashbery, John. Polizzotti, Mark (ed.). Rizzoli Electa. pp. 7–8, 127. ISBN 978-0-8478-6056-2.
- Storey, David; Miller, Leslie; Kermani, David (May–June 2016). "Voices in Print: Grenfell Press". Art in Print. 6 (1). Archived from the original on August 17, 2019.