dbo:abstract
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- American poet John Ashbery (1927–2017) received numerous awards, nominations, grants, fellowships, and other honors in his lifetime. He was generally regarded as the most-honored poet of his generation and one of the most-honored American writers of any era. He received his first award, the 92nd Street Y Discovery Prize for unpublished poets, in 1952. Four years later, W. H. Auden selected him as the winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition, resulting in the publication of his debut poetry collection Some Trees. His 1975 collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror became the first book to win a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award. To date, Ashbery remains the only writer to attain the achievement, which has been called the "Triple Crown" of American literature. Beyond prizes and awards, Ashbery was a recipient of several monetary grants and fellowships that provided crucial support for his literary ambitions and travel. As a Fulbright scholar, he moved to France in 1955 to study French poetry and teach. He continued to live in the country for nearly a decade thereafter. Years later, the people of France conferred several honors in recognition of his lifelong engagement with French poetry and culture, most notably by making him an officer of the national Legion of Honor. In 1985 he received a MacArthur Fellowship—an unconditional cash prize informally known as the "Genius Grant"—allowing him to quit his job as a professor and write poetry full-time. He also received two Guggenheim Fellowships and two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Poems by Ashbery were often anthologized among the year's best. Ashbery had acquired a reputation as a prolific prize-winner by the early 1990s. According to James F. English's 2004 book The Economy of Prestige, Ashber had received more awards than any other poet in the world. English counted 45 awards for Ashbery, followed by Irish poet Seamus Heaney at 30 awards and fellow American poet Adrienne Rich at 25 awards. David Lehman observed that Ashbery also held a lead over the novelist John Updike, winner of 39 awards, and therefore Ashbery likely stood as the most-honored of any living American writer—at least in terms of sheer quantity of awards._1,_fn._2_—_these_footnotes_clarify_that_Lehman_was_citing_English's_book)_7-0" class="reference"> Although he was considered a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature over the last three decades of his life—and almost certainly the leading candidate among American poets during that period—he never became a Nobel laureate. (en)
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