ASHBERY, John; W. H. Auden ( foreword ). Some Trees.

ASHBERY, John; W. H. Auden ( foreword ). Some Trees.Auden on Ashbery ASHBERY, John; W. H. Auden (foreword). Some Trees. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1956. 8vo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt, in the publishers yellow printed dust jacket; pp. 87, [1]; cloth a touch bumped to lower spine end, jacket minimally toned and rubbed to lower spine; a fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout, in the fine, bright dustwrapper; front free endpaper signed by John

Auden on Ashbery

ASHBERY, John; W. H. Auden (foreword). Some Trees. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1956.

8vo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt, in the publisher’s yellow printed dust-jacket; pp. 87, [1]; cloth a touch bumped to lower spine end, jacket minimally toned and rubbed to lower spine; a fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout, in the fine, bright dustwrapper; front free endpaper signed by John Ashbery in blue ink.

A particularly attractive signed first printing of Ashbery’s first book, chosen by W. H. Auden as winner of the 1955 Yale Younger Poets competition, with Auden’s introduction.

Some Trees, Ashbery’s first full-length collection, was submitted in manuscript for the 1955 Yale Younger Poets competition (an earlier chapbook, Turandot, and Other Poems, had been issued by the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1953). Established in 1918, the Yale Prize for the best debut collection by an American poet is the longest-running annual literary award in the United States, with the winning collection published each year by Yale University Press. In 1955, W. H. Auden was in his ninth year as the competition’s judge, having taken over the job from Archibald MacLeish in 1947. During his tenure, he had chosen Adrienne Rich and W. S. Merwin as winners and would later choose James Wright and John Hollander.

The curious story of Ashbery’s success in 1955 has been described by the poet: ‘I had submitted my poems to the Yale University Press according to the requirement of the competition. […] Frank O’Hara had also submitted a manuscript that year, and both of us had our manuscripts returned by the Press. They’d been screened out from the manuscripts that were sent to Auden … Later we heard that Auden hadn’t liked any of the manuscripts that they’d sent to him and decided not to award the prize that year, and then someone, a mutual friend, possibly Chester Kallman, told Auden […] that Frank and I both submitted. And he asked us through this friend to send our manuscripts, which we did, and then he chose mine, although I never had felt that he particularly liked my poetry, and his introduction to the book is rather curious, since it doesn’t really talk about the poetry. He mentions me as being a kind of successor to Rimbaud, which is very flattering, but at the same time I’ve always had the feeling that Auden probably never read Rimbaud’ (quoted in Kermani, John Ashbery (1976)).

Some Trees is lyrical and formally adventurous, suffused with the young poet’s debts (to Auden, Bishop, Moore, Stevens, Pasternak, Raymond Roussel) but already speaking in Ashbery’s own unmistakable voice.

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