Ashbery Interviewed at the Spectator February 4, 2013: No, that's not the Spectator once owned by Nate Archibald (ahem--poets can watch TV, too!). Over at the UK's Spectator, JP O'Malley transcribes into interview form his two-hour phone conversation with John Ashbery! "Browsing through some of his earliest and most recent work, Ashbery, very patiently, even read me some of his poems: giving me [...] by Harriet Staff

The Observer’s Visit with John Ashbery January 4, 2013: The Observer's Michael H. Miller visits with John Ashbery right on time for the poet's 26th book, Quick Question. One serious pull quote would be what Paul Muldoon said: "'I’m sure people do struggle with his poems,' the poet Paul Muldoon, Ms. [Alice] Quinn’s successor at The New Yorker, wrote in an e-mail. 'Why wouldn’t they? We [...] by Harriet Staff

Dara Wier on Typing Ashbery’s ‘The Instruction Manual’ December 10, 2012: Head over to the BAP blog and check out this great piece by Dara Wier. Here's some: For some reason, I'd never seen a Cry Room before or known that they are fairly commonly found in churches across the country. My friend and I had been talking about how various people handle or have sudden bouts of crying, and we were about to [...] by Harriet Staff

Michael Robbins Reviews John Ashbery’s New Book, Quick Question December 10, 2012: Michael Robbins has reviewed John Ashbery's new book, Quick Question, for the Chicago Tribune. It's "a lot like the last new book," Robbins writes. Well: Lots of poets write the same book over and over, of course, especially as they age. Why complain about Ashbery's sameness when it's so unlikely? In all my years as a [...] by Harriet Staff

Poets! Walt Whitman and John Ashbery Want Your Book! November 9, 2012: The Academy of American Poets reminds us that we have less than a week to get our manuscripts ready for submission to the 2013 Walt Whitman Award. What is the Walt Whitman Award? This: The Walt Whitman Award brings first-book publication, a cash prize of $5,000, and a one-month residency at the Vermont Studio Center to an American who has [...] by Harriet Staff

Found: Two Unpublished Poems by James Schuyler August 2, 2012: Once again at Isola di Rifiuti, John Latta has a great post: while "looking for something only tangentially related to [James] Schuyler—a copy of anything indubitably typed on Frank O’Hara’s Museum of Modern Art office typewriter," Latta discovered two unpublished Schuyler poems: Found: two (seemingly) previously unpublished James [...] by Harriet Staff

A Full Report and Video of John Ashbery at Poets House July 27, 2012: At the Ploughshares blog, James Tolan reports on John Ashbery's recent reading at Poets House, remarking at first that "[t]he food was good and conversation easy, and what was to come might be less so." (Rumor had it that Ashbery was not well: "But he had come and was now upstairs.") A bit more on the completely packed event ("the head count [...] by Harriet Staff

Prufrock, Adamantine Stupidity, Tennessee Williams, and Latin American Modernists July 3, 2012: We talk a lot about poets' first appearances in Poetry and one of the most influential, and most frequently mentioned, is T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The poem appeared in the June 1915 issue of Poetry and at the time of its publication, as his biographical note observes, Eliot had “published nothing hitherto in [...] by Lindsay Garbutt

Happy Birthday, Kenneth Koch! February 28, 2012: Happy Birthday, Kenneth Koch! Koch would have been 87 today. We really like this interview between Koch and John Ashbery, republished by This Recording last January, and originally printed as a chapbook, "A Conversation with Kenneth Koch," in 1965 (Interview Press). At top, Koch rehearsing for a play in 1977. Amazingly, Ashbery and Koch could [...] by Harriet Staff

Poets House rolls out a new website February 15, 2012: Poets House recently launched a snazzy new website. Check it out here. While the grown-up in us has been listening to Ann Lauterbach discuss a poem by John Ashbery, the kid in us has been finding inspiration at the Inspiration Station. Seriously, how cool is that! by Harriet Staff