John Ashbery was a poet born in Rochester, New York, in 1927. The work of poetry he is most recognized for, Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror, was published in 1975 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Ashbery earned degrees from Harvard, New York University, and Columbia University; he received a Fulbright Fellowship to France and lived there from the mid-1950s to 1965. For funds, he worked as a translator, an art editor, and an art critic. After returning to the US, he lived in New York and later served as the state’s poet laureate from 2001-2003.