Ashbury Honored at Brooklyn Book Festival

RENOWNED POET JOHN ASHBERY HONORED AT FIFTH ANNUAL BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL
Pulitzer Prize winner Ashbery receives annual Brooklyn Book Festival "BoBi" Award on Saturday, 9/11 and appears on Sunday 9/12 in conversation with author Paul Auster
 
On Sunday, September 12, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn Literary Council and Brooklyn Tourism hosted the fifth annual Brooklyn Book Festival. Each year, the Brooklyn Book Festival "BoBi" award is given to an author who has made a broad impact on the field of literature. This year's recipient was John Ashbery, who was honored at the Brooklyn Book Festival Gala on Saturday, September 11, 2010, at Skylight One Hanson. The award, which is designed by Urban Glass, was established in the festival's second year. Previous BoBi recipients are Edwidge Danticat (2009), Walter Mosley (2008), and Paul Auster (2007). Ashbery also participated in this year's festival program, in an on-stage conversation with Paul Auster, Sunday, September 12.
 
"As the great poet MariAnne Moore wrote, 'there is in Brooklyn something that makes me feel at home,'" said Ashbery. "Although I've never lived in Brooklyn, my first job out of college was at the Brooklyn Public Library and, much later, I had the pleasure of teaching poetry at Brooklyn College. Now, after getting this wonderful award at the Brooklyn Book Festival, I too feel very much at home here."
 
"The selection of John Ashbery as the inaugural Best of Brooklyn poet is perfect," said Alice Quinn, Executive Director Poetry Society of America, a BKBF programming partner. "Ashbery is the absolute incarnation of a New York poet-identified with the famous New York School, a lively and distinguished writer on the arts, an enduring and incandescent figure in our poetic landscape. 
 
Ashbery's first collection, Some Trees (1956), won the Yale Younger Poets Prize. His collections include The Tennis Court Oath, The Double Dream of Spring, and Houseboat Days. The 1975 Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror garnered the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His 1984 A Wave won the Bollingen Prize and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. His most recent collection, Planisphere, came out in 2009 from Ecco Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
 
"Of all the poets now at work in English, John Ashbery has cast the broadest and the deepest influence over the poetry of the past 40 years," said acclaimed poet Stephen Burt. "Fortunately, he deserves it; and his sinuously memorable, consistently surprising, soaring yet unassuming, ever-branching tree of works remains fun to climb. Start anywhere, and savor each leaf."
 
Ashbery's connection to Brooklyn and New York runs deep. His biography includes work as a reference librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library and co-director of the poetry MFA program at Brooklyn College. (He has also taught at Harvard and Bard College.) From 2001 to 2003, he was poet laureate of New York State.
 
"As a young poet I tried to imitate John Ashbery's famous poem, 'Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.' I attempted to mimic his wit, keen observation, and linguistic invention," said Brooklyn Poet Laureate Tina Chang. "Though my efforts failed miserably, I became a student of Ashbery's by being an observer and reader. Generations of writers have been mentored and inspired in this way, by following his life's work with remarkable fascination. His literary influence is a force of its own and his living legacy is undeniable."
 
As a poet, Ashbery was particularly influenced by the American abstract expressionistic movement. He also worked as an art critic in France during the 1950's and 1960s, and later in the United States. "My poetry imitates or reproduces the way knowledge or awareness come to me," he told the Times of London. "I don't think poetry arranged in neat patterns would reflect that situation. My poetry is disjunct, but then so is life."
 
 
The fifth annual Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday, September 12, featured an all-star literary lineup, including Salman Rushdie, Naomi Klein, Colson Whitehead, Venus Williams, Mary Gaitskill, Paul Auster, Sarah Silverman, Rosanne Cash, Paul Krugman, Sarah Silverman, Gary Shteyngart, Francine Prose, Dennis Lehane, Pete Hamill, Jennifer Egan, John Ashbery, Russell Banks, Michael Connelly, John Hodgman, Kristen Schaal, Per Petterson, Sam Lipsyte, Sloane Crosley, Sandra Rodriguez, Paul Harding, Maaza Mengiste, Amy Goodman, Marlon James, Jean Valentine (New York State Poet Laureate), Elizabeth Nunez and many, many more, as well as Children's and Young Adult Lit stars like Rebecca Stead, Sara Shepard, Jacqueline Woodson, Jon Scieszka, Jenny Han, Mac Barnett, Tad Hills, Chris Raschka, Michael Rex, Matthew Reinhart and Francisco X. Stork.
 
This renowned free, literary celebration showcased more than 200 national and international authors in readings and panel discussions as well as 175 booksellers, publishers, presses and organizations in an outdoor literary marketplace. The Festival is a premier literary event in New York City, drawing more than 30,000 attendees from around the world.
 
This year it was expanded to include three days of special themed events "bookending" the Festival from September 10-12 in partnership with cultural organizations like BAM, Bell House, The Brooklyn Kitchen, Brooklyn Public Library, Greenlight Bookstore, Littlefield, St. Ann's Warehouse, PEN American Center, Irondale Center, Brooklyn Public Library, powerHouse, Debut Lit, WORD, Light Industry, Triple Canopy, Mainspring Collective and more!
 
The Brooklyn Book Festival is presented by Brooklyn Tourism and the Brooklyn Literary Council, initiatives of Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. Brooklyn Book Festival sponsors include Astoria Federal Savings; Boar's Head Provisions; Brooklyn Community Foundation; Citi; Con Edison; Downtown Brooklyn Partnership; NYC & Company Foundation; NYC Department of Parks & Recreation; New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge; New York State Council on the Arts; St. Francis College; Skylight One Hanson; Target; Time Out New York Kids and WABC-TV. Cultural and programming partners are BAM; the Brooklyn Historical Society; Brooklyn Public Library; Cave Canem; Housing Works Bookstore Café; LIVE from the NYPL; The Nation; the National Book Foundation; The New York Review of Books; PEN American Center; Poetry Society of America; and St. Francis College.
 
With a festival this hip, smart and diverse-Brooklyn is indeed Book-lyn!
 
 
Skylight One Hanson is an art-deco masterpiece that can accommodate both large and small events. Located in the former Williamsburgh Savings Bank Clocktower, Brooklyn's most famous landmark, the spectacular details and soaring 63-foot ceilings tell the story of New York's past through iconography, mosaic murals, and sculptural reliefs. This breathtaking space has been perfectly restored and offers several unique areas to accommodate a variety of events. The minimalist Vault serves as the perfect contrast to the museum-worthy intricacies of the Main Bank Hall while the Mezzanine provides an intimate environment with striking 40-foot windows.
  
Founded in 1977 by artists Richard Yelle and Erik Erikson as the New York Experimental Glass Workshop, UrbanGlass was the first artist-access glass center in the United States and is now the largest. Previously, those interested in working in glass could only do so at art schools, in factories or by building their own studios. When UrbanGlass opened its doors, glass as an art medium became available for the first time to a wide range of artists at an affordable price. Today, the facility of UrbanGlass serves as the primary studio of over 350 artists each year. In addition to the artist-access studio, UrbanGlass offers a comprehensive education program of classes, workshops and intensives at every skill level - from novice to professional - in a wide variety of glassworking techniques, including glassblowing, hot casting, kiln casting, lampworking, fusing, slumping, neon, mosaics, staiNed Glass and coldworking.