<DIV>With this volume, The Library of America inaugurates a collected edition of the works of America?s preeminent living poet. Beginning with <I>Some Trees</I> in 1956, John Ashbery has charted a profoundly original and individual course that has opened up pathways for subsequent generations of poets. At once hermetic and exuberantly curious, meditative and unnervingly funny, dreamlike and steeped in everyday realities, and alive to every nuance of American speech, these are poems that constantly discover new worlds within language. This first volume of the collected Ashbery includes the complete texts of his first twelve books, including such groundbreaking collections as <I>Rivers and Mountains, Three Poems, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror</I> (which won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1975), and <I>Houseboat Days</I>. It also features an unprecedented gathering of more than sixty previously uncollected poems written over a period of four decades, a rare treasure trove for poetry lovers. This volume is a landmark portrait of a modern master.<BR><BR></DIV>