New York, NY, March 15, 2006 — From April 6 to 8, the New School’s Graduate Writing Program will present The New School Ashbery Festival, a tribute to John Ashbery, one of the most widely read and revered American poets of the past few decades both in this country and around the world. The three-day festival will feature two major presentations by Ashbery himself—a solo reading of recent work and a reading of his legendary long poem “Litany” (1979), which has been recited only once before in public. In addition, there will be readings by such eminent contemporary poets as Billy Collins, Jorie Graham, John Koethe, James Tate, and Dara Wier; a staged reading of Ashbery’s one-act play The Heroes; and panels featuring well-known painters, critics, and international scholars.
“Ashbery is the last surviving original member of the New York School of poets and undoubtedly the most influential of American poets today,” said David Lehman, poetry coordinator of the New School Writing Program and co-organizer of the festival. “A celebration of his achievement is also an opportunity to convene a fascinating group of poets and artists who have been inspired by Ashbery's example. Poets, scholars, and critics from seven countries— the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Spain, Poland, and Japan—will participate in this remarkable event.”
Born in 1927, John Ashbery published his first collection of poems, Turandot and Other Poems, in 1953. Just three years later, in 1956, W.H. Auden chose Ashbery’s Some Trees as the winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize, an award that helped launch his career. His 1975 Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award—the three most coveted American literary awards. Among numerous other awards Ashbery has earned are the Robert Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His more than 20 acclaimed volumes of poetry include As We Know (1979), Shadow Train (1981), A Wave (1984), Flow Chart (1991), Wakefulness (1998), Your Name Here (2000), As Umbrellas Follow Rain (2001), Chinese Whispers (2002), and Where Shall I Wander (2005), out in paperback this month from Ecco.
The New York School of poets has a long history with The New School. In the early 1960s, Kenneth Koch and Frank O’Hara taught writing here and, in recent decades, Ashbery himself has regularly given readings and made guest appearances in poetry workshops. “John Ashbery is a true friend of the Graduate Writing Program and a close personal friend of many of our faculty members,” said Robert Polito, director of the Graduate Writing Program at The New School and co-organizer of the festival. “What began as a simple desire on our part to honor John and his work has lifted off in surprising and delightful ways. He’s one of the poets—and there are only a few others—who are revitalizing our language and reinventing the art of poetry for our time.”
Unless otherwise noted, The New School Ashbery Festival will take place at The New School, 66 West 12th Street (near Sixth Avenue), April 6-8. It is free and open to the public. For more information, call 212.229.5353, email [email protected], or visit www.newschool.edu/publicprograms.
The New School John Ashbery Festival is sponsored by the New School Graduate Writing Program with the support and cooperation of Bard College's Ashbery Resource Center, a project of The Flow Chart Foundation.
About The Graduate Writing Program at The New School
The New School has been a vital center for writing and its instruction since 1931, when Gorham Munson, a Manhattan editor and influential partisan of the Alfred Stieglitz circle, introduced his now-legendary workshop in creative writing. Since 1996, The New School has offered a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree with concentrations in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and writing for children. Founded by poet and biographer Robert Polito, the MFA program marks the latest transformation in the school’s commitment to creative writing. Over seven decades of steady innovation, The New School’s writing faculty has featured many of America’s most important poets, novelists, literary critics, and editors, including from past to present: Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, Robert Lowell, Leroi Jones, Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, Kay Boyle, Marguerite Young, and Alfred Kazin. The current MFA faculty includes such distinguished writers as Francine Prose, Helen Schulman, Stephen Wright, Dale Peck, David Gates, Philip Lopate, Vivian Gornick, Susan Cheever, Abigail Thomas, Honor Moore, Paul Violi, Susan Bell, Suzanna Lessard, Elaine Equi, Shelley Jackson, Jeff Allen, Jonathan Dee, James Lasdun, Hettie Jones, Benjamin Taylor, along with David Lehman and Robert Polito. Both in the classroom and through the participation of distinguished visitors, the New School Writing Program aims to animate, expand, and intensify the writer's life.
About The New School
Located in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village, The New School is a center of academic excellence where intellectual and artistic freedoms thrive. The 8,800 matriculated students and 10,000 continuing education students who attend the university’s eight schools enjoy small class sizes, superior resources, and a renowned faculty whose members practice what they teach. Artists, scholars, and students from all walks of life attend its diverse programs and can earn everything from certificates to bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. When The New School was founded in 1919, its mission was to create a place where global peace and justice were more than theoretical ideals. Today, The New School continues that mission and fosters worthy and just citizens of the world.
THURSDAY, APRIL 6
1 p.m., room 510: Ashbery’s Landscapes: The Role of Landscape in Ashbery’s Work
Marit MacArthur (California State University, Bakersfield), “Late Nostalgia”; Timothy Gray (College of Staten Island, City University of New York), “Locus Sodus”; Ann Mikkelsen (Florida State University), “Cold War, Cold Pastoral: Ashbery’s Poetics of the 1950s and 1960s.”
2:30 p.m., room 510: New Resources in Ashbery Studies
David Kermani and Micaela Morrissette introduce Bard College's new online Ashbery ResourceCenter, a project of The Flow Chart Foundation; Eugene Richie and Rosanna Wasserman discuss Ashbery's development of a personal canon as revealed through his Selected Prose (edited by Richie) and their forthcoming volume of his selected translations.
4:30 p.m., Tishman Auditorium: Poets and Artists
Artists and poets Jane Hammond, Archie Rand, Jenni Quilter, David Lehman discuss their collaborations with Ashbery and show slides and rare videotape of him from 1966.
7:30 p.m., Tishman Auditorium: Group Reading and Homage to Ashbery moderated by David Lehman
Each poet will read one short Ashbery poem and an additional poem.
Kacper Bartzcak (poet from Poland) will read a poem yet to be chosen.
Mark Bibbins (The New School) will read “Summer.”
Star Black (poet and photographer) will read a poem from Shadow Train.
Marc Cohen (poet) will read “The Double Dream of Spring.”
Billy Collins (former U.S. Poet Laureate) will read “At North Farm.”
Douglas Crase (poet) will read “The One Thing That Can Save America.”
Jacek Gutorow (poet from Poland) will read “Late Echo.”
Daniel Halpern (Ashbery’s editor at Ecco Press) will read “A Worldly Country.”
Bob Holman (poet) will read an excerpt from "Girls on the Run."
Vicki Hudspith (poet) will read “The Chateau Hardware.”
Tomoyuki Iino (poet from Japan) will read “They Dream Only of America.”
Deborah Landau (The New School) will read “Ignorance of the Law is no Excuse.”
Ann Lauterbach (Bard College) will read “A Blessing in Disguise.”
James Longenbach (Rochester University) will read “A Visit to the House of Fools.”
Geoffrey O’Brien (Library of America) will read “The Other Tradition.”
Ron Padgett (poet) will read “Two Scenes.”
Robert Polito (The New School) will read “Memories of Imperialism.”
Pawel Marcinkiewicz (poet from Poland) will read “Title Search.”
David Shapiro (William Paterson College) will read “How to Continue.”
James Tate (University of Massachusetts) will read “My Philosophy of Life.”
Susan Wheeler (The New School) will read “Crazy Weather.”
Dara Wier (University of Massachusetts) “Like America”
FRIDAY, APRIL 7
11 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., room 510: Panels on Ashbery Featuring Leading Scholars, Critics, and Poets
11 a.m.
Kacper Bartczak (Poland) on “Two Scenes,”
Roger Gilbert (Cornell University) on “How to Continue,”
James Longenbach (Rochester University) on “Retro,”
Meghan O’Rourke (Slate and the Paris Review) on a poem yet to be chosen,
Jacek Gutorow (Poland) on “The One Thing That Can Save America,”
Melcion Mateu-Adrover (New York University; Catalan translator of Ashbery) on “The Instruction Manual.”
2 p.m.
Tomoyuki Iino (Japan) on “They Dream Only of America,”
Jennifer Quilter (United Kingdom) on a selection from “The Vermont Notebook,”
Andrew DuBois (Canada) on a selection from “The System,”
John Emil Vincent (Wesleyan University) on a poem from Your Name Here,
Pawel Marcinkiewicz (Poland) on “Sonnet: More of Same,”
William Burgos (Lone Island University) on The Heroes.
4:30 p.m.
John Koethe (University of Wisconsin) on “Definition of Blue,”
Dara Wier (University of Massachusetts) on a selection from “Flow Chart,”
Jorie Graham (Harvard University) on "As One Put Drunk into the Packet-Boat,”
Lacy Rumsey (France) “And the Stars Were Shining,”
Ignacio Infante (Rutgers University) “At North Farm.”
7:30 p.m., Tishman Auditorium: A Solo Reading by John Ashbery, introduced by James Tate.
SATURDAY, APRIL 8
Rare Readings at The Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery (between Bleecker and East Houston)
2 p.m.: A reading of Ashbery’s one-act play, “The Heroes.” Actors will include artists and poets Bob Holman, Vicki Hudspith, Vincent Katz, David Lehman, and others.
3 p.m.: A reading of Ashbery’s “Litany” (1979)—a long poem written in double columns meant to be read simultaneously—by poets John Ashbery, Ann Lauterbach, James Tate, and Dara Wier.
For more information, call 212.229.5353, email [email protected], or visit www.newschool.edu/publicprograms.