The Double Dream of Things: John Ashbery as a Poet and Collector in his Hudson Home

Karin Roffman’s talk will explore how John Ashbery’s life as a poet and a collector began simultaneously at the age of thirteen when Ashbery declared in a childhood journal that he would become an artist and when Ashbery, motivated by the recent loss of a favorite childhood home, began to study new ways to decorate an old house.  In her talk, Roffman will discuss the ways in which Ashbery’s interests in poetry and collecting strongly influenced one another, informing how he has created his written work and domestic interiors.  Manifestations of this mutual influence can be observed in the attention toward things and houses in Ashbery’s poetry and plays, and in his eventual purchase and decoration of an 1894 Victorian home in upstate New York.