Poetry

• Turandot and other poems (1953)
• Some Trees (1956), winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize
• The Tennis Court Oath (1962)
• Rivers and Mountains (1966)
• The Double Dream of Spring (1970)
• Three Poems (1972)
• The Vermont Notebook (1975), illustrated prose poems
• Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975)
• Houseboat Days (1977)
• As We Know (1979)
• Shadow Train (1981)
• A Wave (1984)
• April Galleons (1987)
• Flow Chart (1991), book-length poem
• Hotel Lautréamont (1992)
• And the Stars Were Shining (1994)
• Can You Hear, Bird? (1995)
• The Mooring of Starting Out: The First Five Books of Poetry (1997)
• Wakefulness (1998)
• Girls on the Run (1999), a book-length poem inspired by the work of Henry Darger
• Your Name Here (2000)
• As Umbrellas Follow Rain (2001)
• Chinese Whispers (2002)
• Where Shall I Wander (2005)
• Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems (2007)
• A Worldly Country (2007)
• Planisphere (2009)
• Collected Poems 1956-87 (Carcanet Press) (2010), ed. Mark Ford
• Quick Question (2012)
• Breezeway (2015)
• Commotion of the Birds (2016)

Poems

• "East February", 2014. The New Yorker. 90 (5): 78.

Prose, plays and translations

• A Nest of Ninnies (1969), with James Schuyler. (Carcanet Press 1987, Paladin Books 1990)
• Three Plays (1978). Carcanet Press (1988).
• Mayoux, Jean-Jacques (1960). Melville. Trans. by John Ashbery. 
• The Ice Storm (1987), (32-page pamphlet)
• Reported Sightings: Art Chronicles, 1957-1987 (1989) (Alfred A. Knopf), ed. David Bergman, Art Criticism and Commentary
• Other Traditions(2001)
• 100 Multiple-Choice Questions (2000) (reprint of 1970 experimental pamphlet)
• Selected Prose 1953-2003 (2005)
• Martory, Pierre The Landscapist Ashbery (Tr.) Carcanet Press (2008)
• Rimbaud, Arthur Illuminations Ashbery (Tr.) W. W. Norton & Company (2011)
• Collected French Translations: Poetry, edited by Rosanne Wasserman and Eugene Richie (2014)
• Collected French Translations: Prose, Edited by Rosanne Wasserman and Eugene Richie (2014)