Ashbery on the Bridge: Poetry in Public Space

One of John Ashbery’s finest poems is strung across the bridge that connects the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden with neighboring Loring Park. Designed by artist/architect Siah Armajani, the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge dramatically inserts poetry into the public sphere. In this talk, poet/critic Eric Lorberer offers a visual “guided tour” of the structure, showing how the poem and the architecture work together as public art, and also examining ways that this commissioned text informs Ashbery’s poetics. Lorberer is editor of Rain Taxi Review of Books.