For those who savor poetry, the name John Ashbery resonates in significant — though not always favorable — fashion. The author of 20 collections, Ashbery, who died last fall, won virtually every U.S. poetry award including a 1976 Pulitzer Prize for "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror."

Though continually fresh, innovative and energized, Ashbery's work could also be divisive in its surrealistic, abstract and — here's that most dreaded of critical descriptions — "postmodern" qualities.

On Friday, scholars Karin Roffman and Willard Spiegelman will settle in club chairs in Stonington's welcoming La Grua Center and discuss Ashbery's life and work. Roffman, a senior lecturer in humanities and English at Yale, is the author of "The Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery's Early Life." Spiegelman, a Stonington resident and author of numerous books, is Hughes Professor of English, Emeritus, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

"John Ashbery: Karin Roffman and Willard Spiegelman in Conversation," 6 p.m. Friday, La Grua Center, 32 Water St., Stonington; $5 suggested donation; (860) 535-2300.