Breezeway

John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, in 1927. His books of poetry include Breezeway; Quick Question; Planisphere; Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems, which was awarded the 2008 International Griffin Poetry Prize; A Worldly Country; Where Shall I Wander; and Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, which received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. The winner of many prizes and awards both nationally and internationally, in 2011 he received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, and in 2012 he received a National Humanities Medal, presented by President Obama at the White House. He lived in New York until his death, aged ninety, in 2017.

'The lyrics in Breezeway, a new collection by the octogenarian poet John Ashbery are as good as his finest. I especially like the final poem, poignantly reprising the last line of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale', "Do I wake or sleep?"' Salley Vickers, The Observer - The New Review, 29.11.2015.