The Greats:
13 Men Who Changed Everything (#13)

For the next 13 weeks we’ll count down the most important names in culture, 13 men who broke new ground, brought down barriers and redefined sexual identity — artists and thinkers who continue to shape the culture around us. Who will be the next James Baldwin, Francis Bacon, or Yves San Laurent? Who are today’s preeminent cultural masters — legends in their own time — men whose influence will resonate long after they’re gone? Here’s our list. And it’s gay.

#13 - JOHN ASHBERY (Poet) 81

In September of 1963 author Kenneth Koch said: “I believe John Ashbery is one of the best poets now alive.” 45 years later, the same can be said. Certainly one of the most decorated poets of our time he is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and most recently the 2008 International Griffin Poetry Prize. Influenced by other homo-neurotic favorites — W.H. Auden (gay), Jasper Johns (gay), Gertrude Stein (gay) — his work has often been labeled “controversial” or “avant-garde” and “difficult,” while his name is mentioned along side Whitman, Pound, Auden, and Eliot. Not bad for a guy who partied with Andy Warhol.

Still Ashbery remains humble — or as humble as an award-winning poet can be. Here’s a quick transcript of a 2005 interview with NPR’s Scott Simon:

Scott Simon: May I ask, Mr. Ashbery–none of my business, but let’s say if you were to fill out, I don’t know, an application for an apartment in New York or a credit card, and it comes to vocation—do you put poet?

John Ashbery: No, that’s very embarrassing to say that you’re a poet. In fact, I can’t think of any other artistic trade that has the same amount of embarrassment attached to its title.

Frank O’Hara (left) & John Ashbery (right), 1953 (photo by Kenneth Koch)

Later in the interview:

Scott Simon: Do you think of your poems as being accessible to people?

John Ashbery: Well, I’m told that they’re not. I wish that they were as accessible to as many people as possible. They are not, I wouldn’t say, private. What they are is about the privacy of all of us and the difficulty of our own thinking and coming to conclusions. And in that way they are, I think, accessible if anybody cares to access them.

Granted, poetry isn’t my forte, but listening to Ashbery read has changed my appreciation. Penn Sound has uploaded MP3’s of various Ashbery readings.

John Ashbery lives in a rented apartment in Chelsea and a Colonial-revival house in Hudson, NY with his partner, David Kermani. They met in 1970. Ashbery was 42. Kermani was 23.

– A. CERNA