ITHACA, N.Y. -- John Ashbery, considered one of America's greatest living poets, will give this year's Robert Chasen Poetry Reading on Thursday, April 10, at 4:30 p.m., in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium of Goldwin Smith Hall at Cornell University. The reading, hosted by the Department of English at Cornell, is free and open to the public.

Ashbery is the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Language and Literature at Bard College and the author of twenty collections, including Girls on the Run (1999), Your Name Here (2000), and Chinese Whispers (2002). His Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Award, the first time a book of poetry was so universally acclaimed.

A winner of a MacArthur Fellowship, two Guggenheims, the Ruth Lily Prize and the Legion d'Honneur, Ashbery is considered the major transformative voice in contemporary poetry, said Ken McClane, W.E.B. Dubois Professor of Literature and director of Cornell's Creative Writing Program (CWP). The Robert Chasen Reading is supported by CWP and the Cornell Council for the Arts.

For more information about the Ashbery reading or the Chasen series, contact Marianne Marsh at (607) 255-6799.