Summary: The poet, critic, and translator John Ashbery, who died on September 3rd at age 90, won nearly every major writing award, including in a single year, the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award. Besides writing his more than two dozen books and teaching, he served as the New York State Poet Laureate from 2000 to 2003. An experimental poet, who began as a visual artist, he was influenced early on by the French surrealists and was known—despite his disd...
