John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

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Although the stature of John Ashbery as a leading American poet had already been established by collections such as

The Tennis Court Oath

(1962) and

The Double Dream of Spring

(1970), the poems in

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

(1975) helped change the critical perception about Ashbery’s contribution to American poetry. Previously valued for his similarities to Auden, Stevens or Pasternak, and the influence of the French surrealists, it is starting with this volume that both critics and readers have gradually come to see him not as an obscure, avant-garde experimentalist but as a major American poet embedded within the Romantic-Modernist tradition. Just a year after its publication,

Self-Portrait

already situated Ashbery as a poetic voice along the lines of Emerson, Whitman, Eliot and…

2649 words

Citation: Jiménez Muñoz, Antonio José. "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 31 January 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12392, accessed 12 October 2024.]

12392 Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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