I remember I met him once, in a college town in Iowa, as he was entering a house following a reading he’d given to some students, one of whom I knew and happened to have been visiting at that time, from a different part of the country (as I was then a student myself); the house had not been far from the building where he’d read some of his poems, in an auditorium. I don’t know who the house had belonged to, but probably one of the students had been living in it, as a tenant, and had invited everybody over to that residence, after the reading, for drinks and conversation; and so I’d gone too, with my friend, and happened to have walked up the sidewalk and onto the porch just as Ashbery himself had been arriving, with whoever had been accompanying him, because I remember holding the screen door open for him, so that he could enter before me, and exchanging a pleasantry with him, nothing significant or out of the ordinary, probably much like what you’d imagine two people would say, in that situation, but of course an instance I would remember, as I already knew who he was, and admired him, and was aware of his reputation and even, one might say, his legacy.