John Ashbery – Collected Poems

I first encountered John Ashbery in the Fall of 2026 during a NY School Poets seminar class with Dr. Ben Lee at the University of Tennessee.

• The transformation of self over time – the way Dr. Lee phrased how some critics describe Ashbery’s work

“The Boy”

• What are we saying about masculinity and childhood?
• Smugly: sexual politics in childhood

“Some Trees”

• Use of colons.
• Arrangement of the collection.
• Questions we can ask.
  • Why is some trees both the title poem and buried inside the collection.
• influence 
  • Wallace Stevens: philosophical poet was an influence.
  • John Cage
• Ashbery is a lover of form. Like all of the forms he likes to play with all of the different ways poetry can arrange itself.
• He also enjoys sampling found language.