John Ashbery, Poet

b. July 28, 1927

“My poetry is disjunct, but then so is life.”

John Ashbery is one of the most successful 20th century poets. He has won almost every major American literary award, including the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Ashbery graduated from Harvard University, where he studied English and served on the editorial board of the Harvard Advocate. He received his master’s degree from Columbia University. After graduating, Ashbery spent three years in publishing before moving to Paris on a Fulbright scholarship.

Returning to the U.S. in 1957, Ashbery attended graduate classes at New York University. Thereafter, he returned to Paris, where he supported himself as an editor. He eventually moved back to the U.S. to become the executive editor of ARTNews magazine.

Ashbery’s success began with frequent publication of his poems in magazines such as Furioso and Poetry New York. While in France, his book “Some Trees” won the Yale Younger Poet’s Prize. He has won many awards, including the Bollingen Prize and the McArthur Foundation’s “Genius Award.”

His Pulitzer Prize-winning poem “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” which also won the National Book Award and the National Critics Circle Award, is unique for its triple prize status. The poem pulls together his favored themes: creating poetry and the influence of visual arts on his work.

Ashbery’s career has been marked by controversy. Response to his poetry ranges from praise for his brilliant expressionism and use of language to condemnation for his work’s nonsensical and elusive nature.

A prolific writer, he has published over 20 books of poetry, beginning with “Tourandot and Other Poems.” His work has been compared to modernist painters such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Critics assert that he is trying to translate visual modern art into written language.

Since 1974, he has supported himself through teaching positions, the last of which was as the Charles P. Stevens, Jr. Professor of Language and Literature at Bard College. He lives in upstate New York, where he continues to write poetry.

Bibliography

“Ashbery, John (b. 1929).” GLBTQ.8 June 2011.

“John Ashbery Biography.” Famous Poets and Poems.8 June 2011.

“John Ashbery.” Poets. 8 June 2011.

“John Ashbery.” Poetry Foundation. 8 June 2011.

“John Ashbery Quotes.” Brainy Quotes. 8 June 2011.

Liukkonen, Petri.“John Ashbery (1927-).” Kirjasto. 8 June 2011.

Website

Electronic Poetry Center at SUNY Buffalo

The Poetry Foundation

Books

Tourandot and Other Poems (1953)

Some Trees (1956)

The Tennis Court Oath (1962)

Rivers and Mountains (1966)

Sunrise in Suburbia (1968)

Three Madrigals (1969)

A Nest of Ninnies (1969)

Evening in the Country (1970)

The Double Dream of Spring (1970)

Penguin Modern Poets 19 (1971)

The Serious Doll (1975)

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975)

Houseboat Days (1977)

As We Know (1979)

Shadow Train: Fifty Lyrics (1981)

R.B. Kirtaj: Paintings, Drawings, Pastels (1981)

Apparitions (1981)

Fairfield Porter: Realist Painter in an Age of Abstraction (1983)

A Wave (1984)

Selected Poems (1985)

April Galleons (1987)

Ice Storm (1987)

Reported Sightings: Art Chronicles, 1957-1987 (1989)

Three Poems (1989)

Flow Chart (1991)

Hotel Lautreamont (1992)

And the Stars Were Shining (1994)

Can You Hear, Bird (1995)

Pistils (1996)

Wakefulness (1998)

The Mooring of Starting Out: The First Five Books of Poetry (1998)

Girls on the Run (1999)

Other Traditions: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (2000)

Your Name Here: Poems (2000)

As Umbrellas Follow Rain (2001)

The Vermont Notebook (2001)

Chinese Whispers: Poems (2002)

Where Shall I Wander? (2005)

Selected Prose (2005)

A Worldly Country (2007)

Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems (2007)

John Ashbery: Collected Poems, 1956-1987 (2008)

The Landscapist (2008)

Planisphere (2009)

Illuminations (2011)

Books about John Ashbery

John Ashbery and You: His Later Books by John Emil Vincent (2007)

Emanuel Xavier, Poet

b. May 3, 1971  

"Being Latino and gay gives me much to write about. Anything that oppresses us as artists is always great fodder for art."

Emanuel Xavier is a poet, author and editor. He is one of the most significant openly gay Latino spoken word artists of his generation. 

Xavier was born in Brooklyn, New York, the child of an Ecuadorian mother and a Puerto Rican father who abandoned the family before his son was born. When Xavier was three, he was sexually abused by a family member. At 16, when Xavier came out to his mother, she threw him out of the house.

A homeless gay teen on the streets of New York, Xavier soon turned to sex and drugs for money. He became a hustler at the West Side Highway piers and sold drugs in gay clubs. After landing a job at a gay bookstore, A Different Light, Xavier began to write poetry and perform as a spoken word artist.

"Pier Queen" (1997), Xavier’s self-published poetry collection, established him in the New York underground arts scene. "Christ Like" (1999), Xavier’s novel, was the first coming of age story by a gay Nuyorican (Puerto Rican living in New York) and earned him a Lambda Literary Award nomination. Fellow author Jaime Manrique said, "Once in a generation, a new voice emerges that makes us see the world in a dazzling new light. Emanuel Xavier is that kind of writer."

"Americano" (2002), another poetry collection and Xavier’s first official published work, advanced his prominence within the literary community of color. Xavier edited "Bullets & Butterflies: Queer Spoken Word Poetry" (2005), for which he received a second Lambda Literary Award nomination. 

In 2005, Xavier was the victim of a random attack by a group of young men. As a result of the beating, he lost all hearing in his right ear, but continued to write and perform.

Xavier reflects on the assault in his poem "Passage":



Bibliography

• “Emanuel Xavier Bio.” Emanuel Xavier Official Site. 22 June 2010.
• "Emanuel Xavier.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 22 June 2010.
• Johnson, Ramon. "Profile of Emanuel Xavier." About: Gay Life. 21 May 2010.

Books by Emanuel Xavier

• Pier Queen (1997)
• Americano (2002)
• Bullets & Butterflies: Queer Spoken Word Poetry (2005)
• MARIPOSAS: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry (2008)
• Christ Like (2009)
• If Jesus Were Gay & other poems (2010)

Article about Emanuel Xavier

• A&U Magazine Cover Story on Emanuel Xavier (2010)

Recordings by Emanuel Xavier

• Legendary: The Spoken Word Poetry of Emanuel Xavier (2009)

Videos of Emanuel Xavier

• Emanuel Xavier on Def Poetry: Nueva York
• Emanuel Xavier on Def Poetry: Tradiciónes
• Legendary (The E-Mix) Music Video

Websites

• Emanuel Xavier Official Website 

Related articles

• City Room: Using Poetry as a Way to Survive (cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com)

Luz María Umpierre, Poet, scholar, human rights activist

b. October 15th, 1947

Luz María Umpierre-Herrera (born 1947) is a Puerto Rican poet, scholar, and human rights activist who lives in the United States. She is also known as Luzma Umpierre. She is widely recognized for her open exploration of her lesbianism, immigrant experience, and bilingualism, and for her poetic exchange with leading Nuyorican poet Sandra María Esteves. Umpierre has experienced a number of well-documented legal struggles due to workplace discrimination. She currently resides in Orlando, Florida.

Umpierre has published six books of poetry and two chapbooks or "hojas poéticas". She has received significant critical attention, particularly from women and feminist and queer scholars.Her work has not received the same kind of attention in Puerto Rico, where she is not commonly included in leading anthologies or mentioned in literary histories.

Umpierre is a bilingual poet who writes in English and Spanish and sometimes mixes both languages in the same poem. In her work, she establishes a conversation with many American, Latin American, and Puerto Rican women poets and writers such as Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Ana Castillo, Julia de Burgos, and Sandra María Esteves.

Umpierre started out her poetry career with the publication of Una puertorriqueña en Penna (1979), whose title can be translated as "A Puerto Rican woman in Pennsylvania" or "A Puerto Rican woman in pain." In this book, the author offers poems that comment on the discrimination that the Puerto Rican community faced in Philadelphia. She also comments on the prejudice against Puerto Ricans in institutions of higher education, particularly in Spanish departments that judged Puerto Rican Spanish as deficient or incorrect. She also explores these topics in her second and third books, En el país de las maravillas (Kempis puertorriqueño) (1982) and . . . Y otras desgracias/And Other Misfortunes. . . (1985), which shows a marked turn towards more bilingualism.

Umpierre's best-known book is The Margarita Poems (1987), where she openly discusses her lesbianism and offers highly erotic poems about lesbian love. The book also discusses issues of feminist sisterhood, madness, Puerto Rican independence, and immigrant experience. In the 1990s she published her book For Christine (1995). In the first decade of the 2000s, she published two chapbooks or "hojas poéticas": Pour toi/For Moira (2005) and Our Only Island—for Nemir (2009). A volume of her complete works edited by Carmen S. Rivera and Daniel Torres was published in 2011.

May 3: Emanuel Xavier, Latino Poet

b. May 3, 1971  

"Being Latino and gay gives me much to write about. Anything that oppresses us as artists is always great fodder for art."

Emanuel Xavier is a poet, author and editor. He is one of the most significant openly gay Latino spoken word artists of his generation. 

Xavier was born in Brooklyn, New York, the child of an Ecuadorian mother and a Puerto Rican father who abandoned the family before his son was born. When Xavier was three, he was sexually abused by a family member. At 16, when Xavier came out to his mother, she threw him out of the house.

A homeless gay teen on the streets of New York, Xavier soon turned to sex and drugs for money. He became a hustler at the West Side Highway piers and sold drugs in gay clubs. After landing a job at a gay bookstore, A Different Light, Xavier began to write poetry and perform as a spoken word artist.

"Pier Queen" (1997), Xavier’s self-published poetry collection, established him in the New York underground arts scene. "Christ Like" (1999), Xavier’s novel, was the first coming of age story by a gay Nuyorican (Puerto Rican living in New York) and earned him a Lambda Literary Award nomination. Fellow author Jaime Manrique said, "Once in a generation, a new voice emerges that makes us see the world in a dazzling new light. Emanuel Xavier is that kind of writer."

"Americano" (2002), another poetry collection and Xavier’s first official published work, advanced his prominence within the literary community of color. Xavier edited "Bullets & Butterflies: Queer Spoken Word Poetry" (2005), for which he received a second Lambda Literary Award nomination. 

In 2005, Xavier was the victim of a random attack by a group of young men. As a result of the beating, he lost all hearing in his right ear, but continued to write and perform.

Xavier reflects on the assault in his poem "Passage":



Bibliography
“Emanuel Xavier Bio.” Emanuel Xavier Official Site. 22 June 2010.
"Emanuel Xavier.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 22 June 2010.
Johnson, Ramon. "Profile of Emanuel Xavier." About: Gay Life. 21 May 2010.
Books by Emanuel Xavier
Pier Queen (1997)
Americano (2002)
Bullets & Butterflies: Queer Spoken Word Poetry (2005)
MARIPOSAS: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry (2008)
Christ Like (2009)
If Jesus Were Gay & other poems (2010)
Article about Emanuel Xavier
A&U Magazine Cover Story on Emanuel Xavier (2010)
Recordings by Emanuel Xavier
Legendary: The Spoken Word Poetry of Emanuel Xavier (2009)
Videos of Emanuel Xavier
Emanuel Xavier on Def Poetry: Nueva York
Emanuel Xavier on Def Poetry: Tradiciónes
Legendary (The E-Mix) Music Video
Websites
Emanuel Xavier Official Website 

Related articles

• City Room: Using Poetry as a Way to Survive (cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com)