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The American poet John Ashbery (1927–2017) wrote more than 1,300 poems. Most were published in one of the 26 major books of poetry published during his lifetime. There are numerous other uncollected poems, which appeared only in limited-edition books, periodicals like literary magazines, collaborative works, or elsewhere.

Ashbery wrote his first poem, "The Battle", in 1935 at the age of 8 and his final poem, "Climate Correction", in 2017 at the age of 90. Over the span of nine decades, he wrote prolifically and became one of the preeminent American poets of the 20th century. As of 2017, his poetry had been translated into 25 languages. Most of his poetry and other writings are catalogued online at the Ashbery Resource Center, a searchable site maintained by the Flow Chart Foundation, which is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to "explor[ing] the interrelationships of various art forms as guided by [his legacy] and promot[ing] engagement with his work."

Scope of list
The list below is sorted chronologically by date of publication and divided into sections by decade. The following types of poems are included:


 * Collected poems – Most of Ashbery's poems were included in one of his books of poetry (see John Ashbery bibliography § Verse). These collected poems are grouped by the publication date and title of the collection in which they appear. The list provides each poem's first prior publication in a periodical or other book, if known. A collected poem is found within the decade and year of its poetry collection, which is not necessarily the year or decade that it was first published. For example, "To Redouté" was first published in the March 1957 issue of Poetry and collected in The Tennis Court Oath(1962); as such, it appears in the "1960s" section with The Tennis Court Oath, not the "1950s" section.
 * Some poems were included in both a limited-edition book and in one of Ashbery's major collections; when this occurs, the poem is listed with the major collection even if the limited-edition book was published earlier. For example, "Popular Songs" was included in the limited-edition chapbook Turandot and Other Poems(1953) and in Some Trees(1956), and so it is listed with Some Trees.


 * Uncollected poems – Uncollected poems have been published, typically by a literary magazine, but have not been included in any of Ashbery's poetry collections. These are sorted by their date of first publication. Many of these poems, especially those published in 2000 or earlier, can be found in the "Uncollected Poems" sections from the two volumes of Ashbery's poetry published by the Library of America.
 * A few uncollected poems are sorted by the year they were written rather than their date of publication. These include early poems that remained unpublished until they were included in the biography The Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery's Early Life(2017), written by Karin Roffman. For example, Ashbery's first-ever poem "The Battle" was written in 1935 but not formally published until it was included in The Songs We Know Best; it is sorted in the year 1935, even though it was not published until 2017.

The following poems are excluded from the list:
 * Unpublished poems – These include any poem known to exist but never published in a book, periodical, or any other text-based form. For example, Ashbery read an original poem entitled "Moon Song" during a reading at the San Francisco State University Poetry Center on May 16, 1973. A recording of the reading exists, but the text of "Moon Song" is otherwise absent from any of Ashbery's published work. Because it has never been published, it is excluded from the list. Posthumously published poems are included in the list.
 * Duplicates and revisions – Ashbery republished a few poems, sometimes under a different title or with edits. Three poems that first appeared in And the Stars Were Shining(1994) were also included in Can You Hear, Bird(1995). A revised version of "The Shower", originally from The Tennis Court Oath, was included in As We Know(1979). To avoid duplicate entries for poems that are the same or essentially the same, only the first versions of republished poems are included.
 * Note that different poems that happen to share a title are not duplicates. For example, Planisphere(2009) contains two different poems titled "Episode", and Ashbery reused the titles "Quick Question", "Five O'Clock Shadow", and "By Guess and by Gosh" from Can You Hear, Bird for later poems.


 * Translations – The list comprises Ashbery's original poems. His translations of others' poetry are excluded.

The list also indicates whether a poem is included in any of the three books of Ashbery's selected poetry: These collections of previously collected poems are analogous to "greatest hits" or "best of" compilations in popular music.
 * Selected Poems(1967), a compilation of poems from 1956–1966;
 * Selected Poems(1985), covering 1956–1984;
 * and Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems(2007), covering 1987–2005.

1930s and 1940s
Ashbery wrote his first poem, "The Battle", in 1935 when he was eight years old. It was circulated among friends and family with approval, and even reached the famed novelist Mary Roberts Rinehart in New York City. As a teenager he had several poems published in the Deerfield Academy student newspaper, The Deerfield Scroll.

Technically, Ashbery's first professional publication occurred after a classmate plagiarized two of his high-school poems. The classmate, William Haddock, submitted the stolen poems (along with some of his own originals) to Poetry under the pseudonym Joel Michael Symington. Ashbery's poems—but not Haddock's—were selected for publication and appeared in the November 1945 issue. Ashbery submitted the same poems and was rejected. When he discovered the plagiarism, he realized his submission made it seem like he was the plagiarist and feared that his literary career was over before it began. Two years later, the same classmate plagiarized Ashbery's work again, this time submitting to a journal called Voices under his own name. Ashbery notified the magazine and it printed a retraction. During his years at Harvard, he contributed to The Harvard Advocate.

"Some Trees", which shares its name with his debut collection, is his only 1940s poem to be included in one of his books of poetry. However, several were later compiled in the "Uncollected Poems" section of Collected Poems: 1956–1987(2008). Some of his earliest poems—"The Battle" and two others from his childhood diary—were reproduced in Karin Roffman's biography The Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery's Early Life.

1950s
After Harvard, Ashbery moved to New York City as a graduate student of Columbia University, where he received a Master of Arts in English literature. In 1950, "The Dolors of Columbine" appeared in Poetry New York and became Ashbery's first poem to appear in a professional, nonacademic literary magazine under his own name. He made noteworthy contributions to several journals in the 1950s, including Partisan Review and Folder.

His first two books of poetry—Turandot and Other Poems(1953) and Some Trees(1956)—were published in this decade. The Tibor de Nagy Gallery issued Turandot as a limited-edition chapbook featuring illustrations by Jane Freilicher. Some Trees won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition and was published by Yale University Press with a foreword by the competition's judge, W.H. Auden. All but two of the poems in Turandot are also found in Some Trees, which is now generally regarded as Ashbery's true debut. Shortly before the publication of Some Trees, Ashbery received a grant from the Fulbright Program to study and teach in France. He moved in 1955 and, aside from occasional trips back home, lived in France until 1965.

1960s
After Some Trees garnered a muted response from critics and paltry sales, Ashbery resigned himself to obscurity and his writing style developed in an inaccessible, experimental direction. In 1961, Ashbery was identified as a member of the "New York School" of poets alongside Frank O'Hara, Barbara Guest, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch. His work was often rejected from mainstream literary magazines, but found publication in avant-garde "little magazines". He co-founded, edited, and contributed to the magazines Locus Solus (in 1960) and Art and Literature (in 1963).

He published three poetry collections in the 1960s: The Poems(1960), The Tennis Court Oath(1962) and Rivers and Mountains(1966). The Poems was a limited-edition collaboration with the painter Joan Mitchell. He wrote most of the poems in The Tennis Court Oath and several from Rivers and Mountains while living abroad in France, and many of these poems reflect his homesickness for America, feelings of disconnection from American English, and nostalgia for his childhood in rural New York. The Tennis Court Oath divided critics upon its release and is still regarded as one of Ashbery's most challenging and experimental books of poetry. He returned to New York City in the fall of 1965 and supported himself with a job editing ARTnews. Although Rivers and Mountains was nominated for a National Book Award for Poetry, Ashbery remained pessimistic about his long-term prospects for a career in poetry.

1970s
Ashbery's first two collections of the 1970s were The Double Dream of Spring(1970) and Three Poems(1972), the latter a collection of prose poetry that he considered his personal favorite of his own books. In 1975 he released The Vermont Notebook, illustrated by Joe Brainard, and Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, which proved to be his breakthrough. Self-Portrait was a major critical success and became the first and, to date, only book in any genre to receive the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He closed out the decade with Houseboat Days(1977) and As We Know(1979).

1980s
170 poems from the 1980s.

40s–70s [312] + 170 = 482 poems

1990s
318 poems from the 1990s.

40s–80s [482] + 318 = 800 poems

The 1990s were almost certainly Ashbery's most productive decade. During this time, he published six books of poetry and 318 poems. Four of these books were collections—Hotel Lautréamont (1992), And the Stars Were Shining (1994), Can You Hear, Bird (1995), and Wakefulness (1998)—while the other two were book-length long poems—Flow Chart (1991) and Girls on the Run (1999). Running over 5,000 lines, Flow Chart is one of the longest poems ever written by an American.

2000s
396 poems from the 2000s.

40s–90s [800] + 396 = 1196 poems (lower bound)

2010s
191 poems from the 2010s (at least).

40s–00s [1196] + 191 = 1387

1970–1979














1980–1989
















1990–1999


















2000–2009




















2010–present