A selective bibliography of open access internet articles on John Ashbery, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Authors of Web Sites
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Agata, John. A review of Girls on the Run, Boston Review, Feb/March 2000
Conte, Joseph. "The Smooth and the Striated: Compositional Texture in the Modern Long Poem." Conte remarks in this classic essay that 'The "smooth texts" among twentieth-century long poems might include.... John Ashbery's Flow Chart (1991).' In Modern Language Studies 27 (Spring 1997): 57-71
Devaney, Tom. Reviews Chinese Whispers Jacket Magazine, 21 (Feb. 2003)
DuBois, Andrew. A short review of Ashbery's Where Shall I Wander (Ecco Press, 2005), Harvard Review, Dec, 2005
Gander, Forrest. Reviews John Ashbery's Girls on the Run in Jacket Magazine, 8 (July 1999)
Gilson, Annette. "Disseminating 'circumference': the diachronic presence of Dickinson in John Ashbery's 'Clepsydra.'" [Emily Dickinson] Twentieth Century Literature, Wntr, 1998
Herd, David. David Herd's John Ashbery and American Poetry is an attempt to demystify the "obscure" poet, says reviewer Robert Potts, in The Guardian
Imbriglio, Catherine. "'Our days put on such reticence': The rhetoric of the closet in John Ashbery's Some Trees." Nuanced discussion of Ashbery's reticence about homosexuality. Contemporary Literature, Summer 1995, Vol.36, Iss. 2; pg. 249 (subscription only)
Jackson, Richard. "Many Happy Returns: The Poetry of John Ashbery." Ashbery's technique is one in which the figures of speech qualify and redefine their own meanings, continuously returning with additional variations. Ploughshares, Fall 1986
Kane, Daniel. A substantial introduction to John Ashbery from the Literary Encyclopedia, 6/24/03
Lehman, David. An excerpt from Lehman's The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (Doubleday, 1998) summarizes the 1950's cultural context for "the last authentic avant-garde movement that we have had in American poetry."
Lehman, David. The introduction to Lehman's The Last Avant-Garde (1998) is reprinted here, in Jacket Magazine 5 (Oct. 1998)
Lehman, David. A review of Lehman's The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets, in Salon.com, 10/19/98. Another review, by Paul Hoover, from Jacket Magazine 6
Leddy, Michael. "Lives and Art: John Ashbery and Henry Darger." Jacket Magazine 17 (June 2002)
Lepkowski, Frank J. "John Ashbery's revision of the post-romantic quest: meaning, evasion, and allusion in 'Grand Galop.'" Twentieth Century Literature, Fall, 1993
Lorborer, Eric. A review of Girls on the Run, City Pages, 6/2/99
Moramarco, Fred. "Across the Millennium: The Persistence of John Ashbery," suggests ways of enjoying Ashbery's language (with reference to Raymond Roussel). What is 'arctic honey' a student asked Ashbery about his line 'The arctic honey blabbed over the report causing darkness.' "It's probably something cold and sweet" he replied. In American Poetry Review, Mar/Apr 2004
Moramarco, Fred. Lengthy essay from Containing Multitudes, which has sections on John Ashbery and other mid-century poets who "move beyond the impersonal, objectivist confines of modernism and toward a poetry centered in the physical self of the poet who produced it. They participated collectively in the mid-century poetic climate that revolutionized poetry and greatly broadened its possibilities."
Newman, R. Andrew. "A poet in winter: a fine-tuned hand sketches the contours of memory," on Ashbery's poetry of old age. The Weekly Standard, May 2, 2005 (removed)
Norton, Jody. "'Whispers Out of Time': The syntax of being in the poetry of John Ashbery." "Because of the formal, theoretical, and thematic centrality of language in his poetry, Ashbery's work cannot be understood outside the context of contemporary philosophy of language, and especially the work of Heidegger, Derrida, and Wittgenstein." In Twentieth Century Literature, Fall, 1995
Perloff, Marjorie. "Normalizing John Ashbery." Critical interpretations that see Ashbery as continuing the tradition of modernism contrasted to interpretations that contend Ashbery's work represents a breakthrough to postmodernism. From Perloff's web site at SUNY Buffalo
Perloff, Marjorie. "Still Time for Surprises" A review of John Ashbery's Your Name Here and David Herd's John Ashbery and American Poetry. Thumbscrew, 18 (Spring 2001): 46-48
Phillips, Rodney On the New York School poets from the Literary Encyclopedia, 20 December 2004
Qureshi, Ramez. Review of John Ashbery's Your Name Here and poetry by Michael Palmer in Jacket Magazine, 18 (Aug. 2002)
Rehak, Melanie. Review of Your Name Here in Salon.com, 10/24/00
Rubinstein, Raphael. A review of John Ashbery's Girls on the Run, Art in America, Feb, 2000
Rubinstein, Raphael. "A muse in the room, or poets are poor," proceedings of two panels on relationship between poets and painters. Art Journal, Wntr (1993). Notes from two panels at the 92nd Street YM-YWHA, New York, on collaborations between poets and painters. December 3, 1990. Panel: John Ashbery, Jane Freilicher, Kenneth Koch, and Larry Rivers. Moderator: Ron Padgett
Sawyer, Larry. A review of The Vermont Notebook by John Ashbery and Joe Brainard (Granary Books/ Z Press), in Jacket Magazine 28 (Oct. 2005)
Shultz, Susan M. Full-text of Shultz's introduction to The Tribe of John Ashbery
Stein, Judith E. "The word made image - collaboration of John Ashbery and painter Jane Hammond." On a list of evocative titles for paintings Ashbery supplied to the painter Jane Hammond, Art in America, May, 1995
Suarez-Toste, Ernesto. "'The tension is in the concept': John Ashbery's surrealism," in Style, 3/22/04
Sweet, David. "'And Ut Pictura Poesis is her name': John Ashbery, the plastic arts, and the avant-garde," Comparative Literature, Fall 1998
Tranter, John. "Three John Ashberys," an introduction to Ashbery's themes, Jacket Magazine, 2, Jan. 1998. This issue of the outstanding web publication Jacket Magazine is devoted to John Ashbery
Tranter, John. In a 1985 interview Ashbery discusses his later thoughts about "Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror" and The Tennis Court Oath
Tranter, John. A 1988 interview with John Ashbery for the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Vendler, Helen Invisible Listeners: Lyric Intimacy in Herbert, Whitman, and Ashbery (Princeton Univ. Press, 2005) Publisher's blurb
Vendler, Helen Vendler's introductory chapter for Invisible Listeners
Vincent, John. "Reports of looting and insane buggery behind altars: John Ashbery's queer politics." "In this essay, I will show how, in three poems that span Ashbery's oeuvre, a semiotics and thematics of homosexuality jimmies open address and reference, as well as logical, figural, and poetic closure." Twentieth Century Literature, 6/22/98
Vincent, John. "Escaping the future." Vincent notes that "John Ashbery’s Girls on the run... is less difficult than his recent short lyrics because it is less violent in its syntactic, pronominal and address shifts. This is not to say that it is an easy read. However, the book is literally and figuratively clothed in the lush fabric of the 'children’s adventure story.'" Jacket Magazine 32, Oct. 2007
Zinnes, Harriet. Review of Ashbery's Chinese Whispers, in Jacket Magazine, 21 (Feb. 2003)
The Modern American Poetry web site on John Ashbery includes critical commentary: On "'They Only Dream of America'" | On "Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape" | On "Syringa" | On "Daffy Duck in Hollywood" with a Note on "Hop o' My Thumb" | On "Paradoxes and Oxymorons." From Univ. of Illinois
An extended, introductory article on John Ashbery, includes list of works, some poems, and a secondary reading list, from the Poetry Foundation
Recording of John Ashbery reading "The Tennis Court Oath" in 1969, courtesy The Dial-A-Poem Poets
An account of a reading by John Ashbery at the New School, 2/7/2004, from the blog of journalist Sasha Frere-Jones
A brief biography of John Ashbery from the Books and Writers web site, Kuusankoski Public Library, Finland
A brief biography of John Ashbery from the Academy of American Poets
A short introduction to John Ashbery from the New York State Writers Institute, SUNY
Brief discussion of Ashbery as a gay writer considers whether to read him as a gay writer or as a writer who is gay. By Terrence Johnson at the Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Culture
An intro to John Ashbery's work from publisher Random House
On collecting books by the New York school of poets, from AB Bookman's Weekly, Jan. 25, 1999 (removed)
An annotated bibliography of criticism from 1972 through 2000 on Ashbery's "Three Poems," by Adam Talmage Monroe
Professor Joseph Conte's syllabus for English 633: Poetic Texture: The Smooth and the Striated in Postmodern Poetry, Fall 2001
Web site for The Ashbery Resource Center, an archival and research project which collects and preserves materials relating to Ashbery, with a particular focus on Ashbery's work as it relates to the visual arts, cinema, music, architecture, the decorative arts
Discussion questions for teaching John Ashbery from educational publisher Heath
The John Ashbery page at the Electronic Poetry Center, SUNY Buffalo includes some poems, a few links, and a detailed list of Ashbery's works
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