Poetry on TV

John Ashbery has won almost every major award available to an American poet (he picked up the Pulitzer, NBA and NBCC for the same book) and now he's been picked as the poet lauriate--of MtvU, the music network's television station targeted college students, which broadcasts to over 750 campuses across the country.

Ashbery will have no official responsabilities in his new post. Lines from poems spanning his career will be broadcast in brief spots--black text will appear against a white background while an ocean soundtrack plays--on the channel. The 80-year-old Ashbery will hold this post for one year.

Ashbery's most recent collection of poems, A Worldly Country, was published in February by Ecco, which will also publish Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems this November.