in Conversation with John Ashbery

The interview took place in John Ashbery's New York apartment on Thursday, 17 February, 1994. We spoke for some three hours on a range of subjects. This is an edited transcript of the conversation.

DAVID HERD: Your poetry is associated with the city but frequently incorporates rural terms and references. Do you feel that the landscapes you encountered as a child have found a way into your poetry?

JOHN ASHBERY: Yes. When I was very small I lived with my grandparents much of the time, in the city, in Rochester, New York, where my grandfather was professor at the university. But when I was seven years old he retired and left that house and moved to the country to a little village where he had grown up, on the edge of Lake Ontario. My parents lived a few miles away on a farm. I always felt a great nostalgia for living in the city, and for that house in particular and for the fact that there were lots of kids to play with, and when I was taken back to the farm I was really quite solitary and lonely for much of the time, except during the summer when I spent much of the time at my grandfather's house. The village was a summer resort and I had a lot of friends there; mostly children whose parents lived in Rochester. I enjoyed very much the lake and the countryside. Somehow the lake which was also close to where my parents lived, which I could see from my window, was a kind of soothing presence. And even ...