John Ashbery Live at Sanders Theatre, 1976

Introducing The Woodberry Sessions, a series of archival LPs released in collaboration with Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room.

In May of 1976, shortly after being awarded the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror—a triple crown which, to this day, only he has won—John Ashbery returned to his alma mater, Harvard University, to read new and selected poems. John Ashbery Live at Sanders Theatre, 1976 is forty-seven minutes of poetry from Houseboat Days, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, and The Double Dream of Spring.

The record includes a 16-page liner notes booklet with original essays by Douglas Crase, Dara Barrois/Dixon, and John Yau, along with archival material such as photographs of Ashbery’s annotated manuscripts and original artwork by R. B. Kitaj, Larry Rivers, and Ashbery himself.

Track List:

Side A: Street Musicians Pyrography Bird’s-Eye View of the Tool and Die Co. Collective Dawns The Couple in the Next Room Variant Daffy Duck in Hollywood

Side B: Melodic Trains Wet Casements The Wrong Kind of Insurance Business Personals Friends The Lament Upon the Waters Poem in Three Parts Oleum Misericordiae Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape