| Author: | John Ashbery |
| Collection: | 11 |
| Collectionlink: | Compilations |
| Novel: | 1 |
| Novellink: | Prose |
| Play: | 5 |
| Interview: | 2 |
| Option: | 2 |
| Optionname: | Academic theses |
| Reflink: | Sources |
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.
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.
| Year | Title | Publisher | First editioncatalog no. | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1956 | Yale Series of Younger Poets, volume 52. With a foreword by W. H. Auden. | ||||
| 1962 | |||||
| 1966 | |||||
| 1970 | |||||
| 1972 | Prose poetry. | ||||
| 1975 | Illustrations by Joe Brainard. | ||||
| 1975 | |||||
| 1977 | |||||
| 1979 | |||||
| 1981 | |||||
| 1984 | |||||
| 1987 | |||||
| 1991 | Long poem. | ||||
| 1992 | |||||
| 1994 | |||||
| 1995 | |||||
| 1998 | |||||
| 1999 | Long poem. | ||||
| 2000 | |||||
| 2002 | Chinese Whispers | ||||
| 2005 | Where Shall I Wander | ||||
| 2007 | A Worldly Country | ||||
| 2009 | Planisphere | ||||
| 2012 | Quick Question | ||||
| 2015 | Breezeway | ||||
| 2016 | Commotion of the Birds |
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 editioncatalog no. | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1953 | 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. Limited edition of 300 copies. | ||||
| 1960 | Includes prints by Joan Mitchell. Limited edition of 225 copies; 25 are numbered, 200 are signed. | ||||
| 1968 | Chapbook containing the poem of the same name. Limited edition of 126 copies. | ||||
| 1968 | 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. Limited edition of 162 copies. | ||||
| 1969 | Chapbook containing the poem of the same name. Limited edition of 1,020 copies. | ||||
| 1970 | Chapbook containing the poem of the same name. | ||||
| 1970 | Chapbook containing the poem of the same name. Limited edition of 65 copies. | ||||
| 1975 | Chapbook containing the poem of the same name. Limited, numbered, and signed edition of 50 copies. | ||||
| 1975 | Two special first editions:
| ||||
| 1981 | Galway Kinnell, W. S. Merwin, Liz Rosenberg, Dave Smith. Limited edition of 300 copies, signed by all five authors. | ||||
| 1984 | 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. | ||||
| 1984 | Chapbook containing the poem of the same name. | ||||
| 1987 | Chapbook containing the poem of the same name. | ||||
| 1990 | Chapbook containing the six haibun poems from A Wave. Illustrations by Judith Shea. | ||||
| 1991 | 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. | ||||
| 1998 | Contains the poem of the same name. Includes illustrations by Jane Freilicher. Limited, numbered edition of 300 copies. | ||||
| 1998 | 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.[1] | ||||
| 1999 | 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 | Reprint of a poem first published in the January 1970 issue of the journal Adventures in Poetry. Limited edition of 500 copies. | ||||
| 2001 | Dust jacket art by Tom Burckhard. Limited edition in two runs: 100 numbered copies signed by Ashbery and Burckhard, and 900 unnumbered unsigned copies. | ||||
| 1999 | 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. |
| Year | Title | Publisher | First editioncatalog no. | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1969 | A novel written in collaboration with James Schuyler. New edition by Dalkey Archive Press in 2008 . | ||||
| 2000 | Other Traditions | 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. |
| Year | Title | Publisher | First editioncatalog no. | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1967 | Selected Poems | Contains selected poems from:
| |||
| 1985 | Selected Poems | Contains selected poems from:
| |||
| 1993 | Three Books | Collects all poems from Houseboat Days, Shadow Train, and A Wave. | |||
| 1997 | Contains:
| ||||
| 2007 | Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems | Contains selected poems and excerpts from:
| |||
| 2008 | Collected Poems 1956–1987 | 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 | Edited by Rosanne Wasserman and Eugene Richie. | |||
| 2017 | Collected Poems 1991–2000 | 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 | 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). It is Ashbery's first posthumous book—though, according to Polizzotti's preface, it was "for all intents and purposes finished before his passing". |
| Year | Title | Publisher | First editioncatalog no. | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1978 | Three Plays | Contains the plays The Compromise, The Heroes, and The Philosophers. | |||
| 1989 | Reported Sightings: Art Chronicles 1957–1987 | Edited by David Bergman. Contains selected articles of art criticism and journalism. | |||
| 2005 | Selected Prose 1953–2003 | Edited by Eugene Richie. | |||
| 2014 | Collected French Translations: Prose | Edited by Rosanne Wasserman and Eugene Richie. |
| Year ! Work | Notes | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | Included in Three Plays. Written in 1950; first staged by the Living Theatre in 1952. | ||
| 1955 | Included in Three Plays. Written in 1955; first staged by the Poets Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1956. 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. | ||
| 1956 | Four scenes from the play were published in two issues of Semi-Colon; otherwise unpublished. | ||
| 1959 | Included in Three Plays. | ||
| 1960 | To the Mill | A short verse play. First published in Alfred Leslie's one-shot review The Hasty Papers(1960).[2] |
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.
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 ! style="width: 20em" | Publisher ! style="width: 10em" | ISBN ! class="unsortable" | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | Book-length interview. | |||||
| 2013 | Interview with Ashbery at pp. 53–78. |
| Year | Title | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1949 | For his B.A. at Harvard University. About the English-American poet W. H. Auden. | ||
| 1951 | For his M.A. at Columbia University. About the English author Henry Green's novels Living (1929), Party Going (1939), and Concluding (1948). |
In 1976, Ashbery's partner David Kermani published a comprehensive 244-page bibliography compiling the author's then-published works.
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.