Conversations with John Ashbery
Location:
Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, 58 West 10th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues
 | The Creative Writing Program is delighted to announce a special
opportunity for current graduate students enrolled in the program. The 2009 spring semester features a series of three afternoons with John Ashbery,
envisioned as informal “conversations” among Ashbery and the students.
Each meeting will have a general focus but also the flexibility to go
wherever the discussion may lead. The themes, which overlap and are
interrelated, have been chosen to reflect Ashbery’s wide-ranging
involvement with different areas of the cultural world, and to explore
interrelationships of different art forms with his work. [N.B. This is
not a poetry workshop, nor is it a set of lectures.] Participants may wish to indulge in some background preparation. Lots of information, including interviews and critical writings, is available on the web, and there is an organized selection of resources on the website of the Ashbery Resource Center (ARC): www.flowchartfoundation.org/arc (including Ann Lauterbach’s lecture on JA, “Mapping the Real: the Given and the Chosen,” in the “Special Features” section). His own 1968 statement about “The New York School of Poets” and his 1995 Robert Frost Medal Address (both in his Collected Prose) provide a biographical framework. A filmed interview with John Ashbery (part of the Slate/NYU “Open Book: Writers on Writing Series”) is online here. |
 | Schedule: Process and [Restrictive] Forms: Thursday, January 29th, 3–5 pm Session description & reading assignments Film: Thursday, February 19th, 3-5 pm (Other) Visual Arts and Music: Thursday, March 12th, 3-5pm To participate please RSVP with Adam Soldofsky one week before the session: creative.writing@nyu.edu Facilitated and developed by Jonathan Boyd and David Kermani of The Flow Chart Foundation’s Ashbery Resource Center (www.flowchartfoundation.org/arc). |
| Photographs from the February 19 conversation on film. (Photos copyright by Star Black) | |
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