John Ashbery, considered by many to be America’s greatest living poet, was born in Rochester and as a young boy took art classes at MAG’s Creative Workshop. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. The title poem, a meditation on a 16th-c. painting by Francesco Parmigianino, inspired a limited edition artist’s book published in 1984 by Arion Press, for which eight artists—among them Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Jim Dine, and Larry Rivers—contributed prints. Like Parmigianino’s circular painting, the book is printed on circular sheets, blending images and text.
Offered in conjunction with National Poetry Month, this installation marks the first time that the book has been exhibited at the Memorial Art Gallery.
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John Ashbery reads three passages from Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror:
Presented in honor of the 30th anniversary of Writers & Books.