John Ashbery | Ergo Pers Artists' Books and limited editions

The Recital, Ergo Pers 2009, with a
front cover etching by Hanns Schimansky

John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, on July 28, 1927. He has won nearly every major American award for poetry and is recognized as one of America's most important, though still controversial, poets. In an article on Elizabeth Bishop in his Selected Prose, he characterizes himself as having been described as "a harebrained, homegrown surrealist whose poetry defies even the rules and logic of Surrealism."
Ashbery has published numerous collections, beginning in 1953 with Turandot and Other Poems (Tibor de Nagy Editions). His Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror won the three major American prizes: the Pulitzer, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award.
Recently John Ashbery was the winner of the Special “Premio Napoli” 2009 Prize for World Literature.

John Ashbery is the author of more than twenty books of poetry, most recently Planisphere (Ecco, 2009); A Worldly Country (2007); Where Shall I Wander (2005); Chinese Whispers (2002); Your Name Here (2000); Girls on the Run: A Poem (1999); Wakefulness (1998); Can You Hear, Bird (1995); And the Stars Were Shining (1994); Hotel Lautrémont (1992); Flow Chart (1991) and April Galleons (1987).
The qualities of Ashbery’s writing are well known. It’s “an abstract and evocative poetry,” to quote John Olson (writing in Talisman magazine). It’s also poetry, to borrow again from Olson, that’s often difficult to say what it is about. As Olson writes, it “approaches and recedes from meaning.”

He began writing about art in 1957, serving as executive editor of Art News (1965-72), and art critic for New York Magazine (1978-80) and Newsweek (1980-85). Ashbery's art criticism was collected in Reported Sightings: Art Chronicles, 1957-1987 (1989).

He divides his time between New York City and Hudson, New York.

In 2009-2010 Ergo Pers published a double volume artists' book with John Ashbery, Franck André Jamme and etchings by Hanns Schimansky.
The edition consists of two books:
John Ashbery, The Recital, translated by Franck André Jamme and La Recitation de l’oubli | Les gués, les passes, by Franck André Jamme and translated by John Ashbery.
For both books Hanns Schimansky created a series of five etchings.

John Ashbery has achieved a unique status among American poets. Even though much of his work is difficult to read, avant-garde, and post-modernist in character, Ashbery has become revered and beloved by many readers. Three Poems consists of three lengthy and highly intense prose poems called The New Spirit, Theme and The Recital. The three long prose poems ravel and unravel philosophical questions about language's ability to represent the world and about how best to apprehend reality – but these dense matters are leavened with Ashbery's characteristic wit. The third and shortest of the Three Poems, The Recital,' written in April 1971, is now translated into French by Franck André Jamme, and published in a bilingual limited edition by Ergo Pers.

John Ashbery, The Recital, translated by Franck André Jamme is published in an edition of 40 copies in December 2009. For this limited edition, Hanns Schimansky created a series of five etchings.

Colophon
The Recital /Le Récital, a prose poem by John Ashbery, bilingual edition in a French translation by Franck André Jamme, in close collaboration with the author and MarieFrance Azar, published in October, 2009, by Ergo Pers, Ghent. Each copy includes five original etchings by Hanns Schimansky and is further accompanied by a suite of five loose prints of the same etchings, signed and numbered by the artist. All forty copies are signed on the colophon page by the author, the artist and the translator.
The Recital /Le Récital is printed in a limited edition of forty copies, numbered in Arabic numerals, with an additional series of twelve reserved copies for the author, the artist and the translator, numbered I-XII. A separate edition of six copies, reserved for participating collaborators and numbered A-F, consists of six original etchings, instead of five. The etchings were printed in Berlin by Fritze Margull. The text is set in Garamond and printed on 230-gramme Hahnemühle paper. Typography, design and printing are by Rein Ergo.

Price: € 1.200.

Franck André Jamme, La Récitation de L'oubli, translated by John Ashbery, is published in an edition of 40 copies in December 2009. For this limited edition, Hanns Schimansky created a series of five etchings.

Colophon
La Récitation de l’oubli / Les gués, les passes / The Recitation of Forgetting / Fords, channels, poems by Franck André Jamme, bilingual edition in an English translation by John Ashbery, published in October, 2009, by Ergo Press, Ghent. Each copy includes five original etchings by Hanns Schimansky, is signed on the colophon page by the author, the artist and the translator, and is further accompanied by a suite of five loose prints of the same etchings, signed and numbered by the artist.
Les gués, les passes / Fords, channels, is printed in a limited edition of forty copies, numbered in Arabic numerals, with an additional series of twelve reserved copies for the author, the artist and the translator, numbered I-XII. A separate edition of six copies, reserved for participating collaborators and numbered A-F, consists of six original etchings, instead of five. The etchings were printed in Berlin by Fritze Margull. The text is set in Garamond and printed on 230-gramme Hahnemühle paper.Typography, design and printing are by Rein Ergo.

Price: € 1.200.

Planisphere, front and
back cover

John Ashbery is the author of more than twenty books of poetry, most recently Planisphere (Ecco, 2009); A Worldly Country (2007); Where Shall I Wander (2005); Chinese Whispers (2002); Your Name Here (2000); Girls on the Run: A Poem (1999); Wakefulness (1998); Can You Hear, Bird (1995); And the Stars Were Shining (1994); Hotel Lautrémont (1992); Flow Chart (1991); and April Galleons (1987).

Planisphere has ninety-eight new (previously unpublished or uncollected) poems. A planisphere in its primary definition is "a map of half or more of the celestial sphere with a device for indicating the part of a given location visible at a given time.”
Planisphere, unlike other Ashbery books, is designed and composed by Quemadura (a.k.a. Jeff Clark).

[Selected bibliography]

[Selected bibliograph | Writings on art and limited editions]

[Browse Inside Planisphere: New Poems by John Ashbery]

Some trees

David Kermani's John Ashbery: A Comprehensive Bibliography is a standard reference in the field of Ashbery studies.

The Ashbery Resource Center

The Ashbery Resource Center (ARC), a project of The Flow Chart Foundation (FCF), is an archival and research facility initially developed in cooperation with Bard College.

A narrative biography of John Ashbery
The annotated, searchable catalogue of the ARC Archive

PennSound: John Ashbery
PennSound is an ongoing project, committed to producing new audio recordings and preserving existing audio archives.

Ron Silliman "Think about John Ashbery’s Three Poems.

Appearing with Barbara Guest on P.E.N. Portraits, hosted by Anne Fremantle, WNYC, May 22, 1977
From Three Poems (1:02)

John Ashbery appearing on Belgische Radio en Televisie, Brussels

A video of John Ashbery speaking at the 35th Anniversary Celebration of the National Book Critics Circle on September 12, 2009, is now posted at the NBCC blog.

John Ashbery reads from Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror:

Part I

Part II

Part III

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