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Template:Did you know nominations/List of honors received by John Ashbery

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by 97198 (talk) 13:33, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

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List of honors received by John Ashbery

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John Ashbery
John Ashbery
  • James F. English, The Economy of Prestige (2004), p. 343: English asks who holds the title of prize-winningest poet and comes up with Ashbery at 45 awards, writing "There may be other poets who have won more awards than this, but I have been able to tabulate only about 30 awards for Seamus Heaney ... and 25 for Adrienne Rich ... The Ashbery list is described by its compilers as 'partial.'" The note about Heaney—an Irish poet—is crucial, because it shows English did not limit his inquiry to American writers.
  • John Emil Vincent, John Ashbery and You: His Later Books (2007), p. 1: "David Lehman noted that Ashbery has won the greatest number of major prizes of any living American author. His forty-five was followed next by John Updike's thirty-nine." Lehman merely states the consequence of English's tallies: if Ashbery is the prize-winningest poet, and if he has won more prizes than the prize-winningest fiction writer, then he is the prize-winningest writer overall.
  • The same statement can be found in an article from The New Yorker: "English estimates that among poets John Ashbery is the leader, with at least forty-five prizes and awards. John Updike sets the pace for novelists, with thirty-nine." The New Yorker also summarizes a key point of The Economy of Prestige about the proliferation of literary prizes in the contemporary era: "Since the nineteen-seventies, English says, there has been an explosion of new cultural prizes and awards ... the number of literary prizes is climbing much faster than the number of books published." Therefore, however broadly one construes the term "history of modern literature", the hook almost certainly remains true; a writer from the 18th-, 19th-, or even early 20th-century could hardly have won 46 awards because there probably weren't even 46 literary awards to be won in the first place. The only reason to hedge with a phrase like "almost certainly" is that the standards used to define what counts or doesn't count as "an award" for purposes of such tallies may differ.

Moved to mainspace by Brandt Luke Zorn (talk). Self-nominated at 23:23, 15 October 2019 (UTC).

Length(!) and age are fine, no copyvio or plagiarism detected, sources are good. However, the hook itself is well-sourced but dubious (as is often the case with these kind of claims). List of honors received by Maya Angelou seems to be a strong contender, but both are dwarved by List of awards and nominations received by Stephen King. Fram (talk) 11:46, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
@Fram: This makes sense. Even if we suppose that Ashbery may have been the "most-honored" writer overall as of 2004, based on English's work, that would uncritically reproduce whatever limitations English had (no way of knowing if he considered "genre" fiction at all when ranking fiction writers, for instance). I wish there were more sources collating the prize-winningest writers, but there's a surprising lack. You'd think this kind of thing would be checked in on more often, but I couldn't find much of an update or expansion on English's work—probably because he only crowned winners, rather than providing rankings that could be checked or updated readily—or even different versions of the same type of ranking.
Besides—and this is totally incidental—I actually like Stephen King a lot! I certainly disagree with what Ashbery's abiding champion, the late Harold Bloom, had to say about King. And as the saying goes, "you come at the [K]ing, you best not miss." I have no desire to come at the King anyway, let alone miss, so I withdraw ALT0.
I've pitched two ALT hooks that narrow the claim: ALT1 is narrowed to just American poetry, rather than all world literature of any genre, while ALT2 is narrowed to poetry of any national origin in the modern era. While both are still fairly broad claims, they're both much more defensible. I even would argue, under the circumstances, they're reasonable claims to stake on a source from 2004, considering the world of poetry isn't ordinarily known for fast-moving, unexpected developments and disruptions (especially not for a metric like "total awards won"). Ashbery continued receiving awards and honors at a steady pace after 2004 and right up until his death in 2017—indeed, he won about a third of his total lifetime haul after 2004. It's very unlikely that English's second-place American poet Adrienne Rich, second-place overall poet Seamus Heaney, or any other poets would have caught up in that time (or since).
While I think either claim is well-founded based the best available sources, ALT1 is the narrower and safer choice. Let me know what you think! —BLZ · talk 20:12, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
Perhaps something like
This matches the source[1] and is in any case true (Lehman claimed it, no matter if it is correct or not) and attributed to a notable critic in his own right. And it still is (to me) noteworthy enough to pique the interest. Fram (talk) 07:53, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
That works for me. No question as to accuracy, and I agree with you that it doesn't compromise interest-piquing. —BLZ · talk 16:44, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
@Fram: Just checking in! —BLZ · talk 05:30, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Issues with hook resolved, but as I proposed a new hook, I shouldn't be the one to give it the green tick. New reviewer wanted! Fram (talk) 06:44, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

I see a problem with the ALT3 hook as the Lehman quote states "any living American author" (my emphasis), not "any American author". Carcharoth (talk) 12:19, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
@Carcharoth: Makes sense, I've added the word "living". —BLZ · talk 23:40, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
The hook looks fine now. Does this make me the 'new' reviewer? I'm not a regular at DYK (though somewhat familiar with the standards), so not sure what happens now. Do I need to 'follow through' and tick a box, or can someone else do that? Carcharoth (talk) 00:15, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
@Carcharoth: It'd be great if you could! Fram already reviewed it on the article criteria (new enough, long enough, within policy), so I don't think there's a compelling need for you to rereview those. You can if you like, but he only needed to recuse himself from judgment of his own alt hook. So the only criteria left hanging were the hook formatting and hook content, specifically accuracy. I think all that's left now is the formality of adding {{subst:DYKtick}}—I think that moves it into a different hidden category for tracking purposes and basically signals to the admins that it's ready for the next stage in the approval process. —BLZ · talk 07:37, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
I'll approve the hook, though the article also needs to be brought into line with the source (i.e. the article needs to say Lehman was referring to American authors living in 2006). Carcharoth (talk) 11:19, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

per above discussions. Carcharoth (talk) 11:19, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

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