John Ashbery's Nest, An Interactive Tour of the Poet's Home

John Ashbery’s Nest is a website and virtual tour of the American poet's home. In 1978, when John Ashbery purchased his first and only house in Hudson, New York, he began an intensive project of creating his ideal vision of a home. Although not well known as a collector, he had actually begun to study American antiques in childhood, composing some of his earliest poems about objects he found. From the 1950s to the 1980s, he also amassed hundreds of new, small collections while also writing about them (ceramics, wallpaper, etc.) in art reviews, in essays for popular magazines on eclectic collectors and their homes, and in provocative new poems. Painstakingly restored over a fifteen-year period, his house became a frame for these assemblages, providing a place to display his discoveries and continue to learn from them. 

While the Hudson house has always been a private space, this project provides, through a website highlighting Ashbery’s creation of each room (including photographs, biographical details, archival records, and audio clips of Ashbery and his partner, David Kermani, discussing each room), both crucial documentation and an experience of how he has used and imagined the home. Links to related poetic texts demonstrate how deeply objects and houses have resonated in Ashbery’s artistic life. Using new virtual reality technologies to explore rooms and see objects closely inside the house, this project— which begins with a prototype view of the Center Hall—enables users to experience the intimacy of being in “the middle of things,” a reality that echoes in Ashbery’s greatest poems.  

The virtual tour works best with Chrome and a fast internet connection.

Project Team

Karin Roffman (Humanities, English, and American Studies)

Monica Ong Reed (Digital Humanities Lab)

Liyan Zhao (Digital Humanities Lab, Yale MFA candidate)

Ninoslav Adzibaba (VRH Solutions)

Milan Branezac (VRH Solutions)

J’Vaughn Johnson (Yale ITS)

Chao Hang Lu (Yale ITS)

Harry Shyket (Yale ITS)

Julie Ramaccia (Yale ITS)

July 5, 2017