Media Contacts
Daniel Morris
212.229.5667 x3094,
morrd109@newschool.edu
Deborah Kirschner
212.229.5667 x4310,
kirschnd@newschool.edu
THE NEW SCHOOL ASHBERY FESTIVAL: A THREE-DAY TRIBUTE TO JOHN ASHBERY
Featuring public readings by Ashbery and other eminent poets
April 6-8, 2006, at The New School
New York, NY, March 8, 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.
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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 specialprograms@newschool.edu,
or visit www.newschool.edu/publicprograms.
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
The New School Ashbery Festival—Page 3
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.
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The New School Ashbery Festival—Page 4
THE NEW SCHOOL ASHBERY FESTIVAL
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Unless otherwise noted, the festival will take place at The New School, 66 West 12th
Street, and is free and open to the public. For more information, call 212.229.5353, email
specialprograms@newschool.edu, or visit www.newschool.edu/publicprograms.
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: Ashbery’s Bibliographers and Editors
David Kermani and Micaela Morrissette of the Ashbery Resource Center discuss the task of
bibliography; Eugene Richie and Rosanna Wasserman talk about editing John Ashbery’s
Selected Prose and Selected Translations, respectively.
4:30 p.m., Tishman Auditorium: Poets and Artists
Artists Jane Hammond, Archie Rand discuss their collaborations with Ashbery and show some
of these resulting works. Also featuring Jenni Quilter and David Lehman. Rare videotape of
John Ashbery in 1966 will be shown.
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.
Mark Bibbins (The New School) will read “Summer.”
Star Black (poet and photographer) will read a poem from Shadow Train.
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 (Bard College) 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”
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FRIDAY, APRIL 7
11 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., room 510: Panels on Ashbery’s Poems 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, Spanish translator of “A Wave”) “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
such as Bob Holman, Vicki Hudspith, Vincent Katz, David Lehman, and Christopher
Stackhouse.
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 specialprograms@newschool.edu, or visit
www.newschool.edu/publicprograms.
***
Media Contacts
The New School Ashbery Festival—Page 6
Daniel Morris
212.229.5667 x3094. morrd109@newschool.edu
Deborah Kirschner
212.229.5667x 4310. kirschnd@newschool.edu