Ashbery, John 1927–

Ashbery is an American poet, dramatist, novelist, editor, and critic. He has sustained an active interest in art and art criticism throughout his career and acknowledges the influence of abstract painting on his verse. Ashbery's poetry has often been criticized for what seems to be an intentional obscurity. (See also CLC, Vols. 2, 3, 4, 6, and Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8. rev. ed.)

Ashbery is a genuinely Whitmanian poet, not of the barbaric yawp variety (which Whitman himself was not, anyway) but in recapturing the subtle ambiance of Whitman's best years (1855–1860), with their delicacy and limpidity of style, enormous range of materia poetica and alternately affectionately relaxed and gently anguished portrayal of the self. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror returns Ashbery to his best mode, as exemplified by his most beautiful previous book, The Double Dream of Spring. From Stevens,...

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