John Ashbery — USA: Poetry, NET Outtakes Series: March 4 & 6, 1966

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The Poetry Center presents John Ashbery, reading and speaking of his poetry and poetics, and together with painter Jane Freilicher talking about her work and the poet's relations with art and artists. He reads from his book published the same year, Rivers and Mountains (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966) and from his early book Some Trees (Yale University Press, 1956; reprinted 1970 by Corinth Books, and by Ecco Press, 1978). The footage was shot on March 4 and 6, 1966, at Freilicher's studio and at Ashbery's apartment, in New York City.

The "Second Edition" NET Outtakes Series programs were made in 1978 by The Poetry Center's American Poetry Archives staff. Assembled from unused 16-millimeter black and white film footage shot during production of the original 15-minute USA: Poetry television programs (produced in 1965–66 for National Educational Television by Richard O. Moore of the film unit of KQED-TV, San Francisco), the outtakes footage is arranged here in the original shooting sequence. Note, some silent footage appears among the outtakes. Funding for The Poetry Center's NET Outtakes Series was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Publisher: American Poetry Archives
Location: Jane Freilicher's studio, New York City; John Ashbery's apartment, New York City
Date: 1966-03-04
Event Run Time: 00:46:10
Contributors: Jane Freilicher; Richard O. Moore
Rights: ©© American Poetry Archives. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. For all other uses please email poetry@sfsu.edu.
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John Ashbery (00:44:07)

Description

John Ashbery is with painter Jane Freilicher at her studio, discussing painting and its relation to poetry, then in his own apartment, in New York City, where he reads and speaks of his poetry, in response to filmmaker Richard O. Moore.

Ashbery reads the first of his "French Poems," as written by him in French, then in his own translation (as published 1970 in The Double Dream of Spring), "Rivers and Mountains" (noting the line "On the unassassinated president’s desk" has "nothing to do with" the assassination of John F. Kennedy, as it was written before that fact), "If the Birds Knew," "A Blessing in Disguise," "They Dream Only of America," "Some Trees," and sections from "The Skaters," and speaks of his sense of timelessness, his preference for avoiding autobiography, "orientalist" influences on his book Rivers and Mountains, published that same year, and the anxiety of working on long poems.

He speaks of the "big influence" that Hölderlin exercises on his work, and among others names Boris Pasternak, Raymond Roussel (he notes as an exception, claiming not to be much influenced by French poetry), Walt Whitman, W. H. Auden, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, "some of " William Carlos Williams, and John Wheelwright as influences and favorite poets.