Here is a selection of poems by John Ashbery, who died Sunday. They were chosen by Gregory Cowles, The New York Times’s poetry editor, and Andrew Epstein, an Ashbery expert at Florida State University.

Some of Mr. Ashbery’s most famous poems are thousands of words long, and they are not included here. But for a longer read, we recommend “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” from his 1975 collection of the same name.

Other poems of note include “The One Thing That Can Save America” (from the same collection) and “Paradoxes and Oxymorons” (from “Shadow Train,” 1980).

“The Chateau Hardware” (1970)

It was always November there. The farms

Were a kind of precinct; a certain control

Had been exercised. The little birds

Used to collect along the fence.

It was the great “as though,” the how the day went,

The excursions of the police

As I pursued my bodily functions, wanting

Neither fire nor water,

Vibrating to the distant pinch

And turning out the way I am, turning out to greet you.

From “The Double Dream of Spring”; reprinted with permission from Ecco Press