The Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery's Early Life
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The Songs We Know Best, the first comprehensive biography of the early life of John Ashbery—the winner of nearly every major American literary award—reveals the unusual ways he drew on the details of his youth to populate the poems that made him one of the most original and unpredictable forces of the last century in arts and letters.
Explore the book“With immaculate detail and eloquence, Roffman has written the first in-depth biography of one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.”Publishers Weekly
John Ashbery’s early life
A life before the legend.
Built from unpublished correspondence, childhood diaries, and more than one hundred hours of conversation, Karin Roffman’s biography traces the experiences that shaped John Ashbery before his celebrated debut.
About Karin Roffman