ENGL 202: the New York School of Poetry: January 2009

Friday, January 30, 2009

DJ Spooky and John Ashbery

This just in, via Five Branch Tree (and before that, the Poetry Foundation): DJ Spooky (who takes his name from a character in William S. Burroughs' Nova Trilogy) reads Ashbery's poem, "Paradoxes and Oxymorons" in this short clip:

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Kenneth Koch Audio and Video

There's not a whole lot of Kenneth Koch audio available on the web (though seeking out recordings from his estate to expand his PennSound author page is a project I'd like to pursue at some point in the future). For now, if you visit his page, you'll find a single reading from a little over a decade ago. Practically the entire reading is dedicated to micro-dramas from his One Thousand Avant-Garde Plays, or songs from the plays, but he does read a lengthy excerpt from "My Olivetti Speaks" (an Olivetti is a brand of typewriter, by the way; c.f. Ron Padgett's "Olivetti Lettera"), and his reading of "One Train May Hide Another" is breathtaking:

On UbuWeb, there's a single poem taken from the Giorno Poetry Systems album, Biting off the Tongue of a Corpse, and a hilarious, spontaneously composed collaboration with Allen Ginsberg from the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church on the Bowery:

Again, here's a link to the Poetry Foundation's podcast, "The Poetry Assassination of Kenneth Koch":

The Poetry Assassination of Kenneth Koch (10:15)

If you follow the link below, you can download a reading Koch did at the Naropa Institute in 1981. and a lecture from 1979 in which he discusses his writing life and his friendships with Ashbery and O'Hara:

Finally, here's a short and very new video in which David Lehman and Mitch Sisskind discuss Kenneth Koch as a teacher:

Starting Kenneth Koch Properly

We'll soon be leaving Frank O'Hara behind and move on to the third core member of the New York School's First Generation, Cincinnati-born-and-raised Kenneth Koch. Koch actually completed a year of classes at UC before enlisting to serve during World War II, having completed high school a year early. He'd eventually matriculate to Harvard (where he'd meet Ashbery and O'Hara) then Columbia, where he earned his doctorate. After a brief stint teaching at the New School, Koch returned to Columbia, where he'd teach for more than forty years, until his death in 2002.

If Frank O'Hara was the social center of New York's poets (as Allen Ginsberg acknowledged in his tribute to the late poet, "City Midnight Junk Strains"), and Ashbery took the greatest risks, challenging his peers to match his daring experiments, Koch clearly put the "school" in the New York School. As an innovative professor, whose poetry classes served as the foundation of the contemporary poetry workshop, he taught a great number of the Second Generation poets, and through his own poetry, as well as a number of books on poetry pedagogy, he provided numerous models and formulas for unlocking one's creative potential.

I'd like you to start off by reading David Lehman's chapter, "Kenneth Koch: the Pleasures of Peace" in The Last Avant-Garde (203), and for a different perspective on the poet, check out Melanie Rehak's profile from the Nation, "Dr. Fun." Another wonderful resource is the Poetry Foundation's podcast, "The Poetry Assassination of Kenneth Koch," which describes a particularly interesting episode from the poet's life. If you're looking for a little more background information, here are a few more links:

In terms of the schedule, I'd like to take advantage of the extra day you've had to keep ahead of things. At the end of next week, we can reevaluate where we stand in terms of Koch and the whole first generation, before the midterm exam.

Friday, January 30th:

from Thank You and Other Poems (1962)

To You (80)
In Love With You (85)
The Circus (97)
The History of Jazz (102)
Collected Poems (105)
Fresh Air (122)
You Were Wearing (133)
Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams (135) (See William Carlos Williams' "This is Just to Say")
Taking a Walk with You (143)

Monday, February 2nd:

from The New American Poetry: 1945-1960

Mending Sump (click here) (see Robert Frost's "Mending Wall")

from The Pleasures of Peace (1969)

Sleeping with Women (165)
We Sailed the Indian Ocean for a Dime (174)
A Poem of the Forty-Eight States (183)
The Pleasures of Peace (228)

from The Art of Love (1975)

The Circus (241)
The Magic of Numbers (245)

from The Burning Mystery of Anna in 1951 (1979)

Our Hearts (301)
Fate (307)
The Boiling Water (330)

Wednesday, February 4th:

from Days and Nights (1982)

In Bed (371)
Girl and Baby Florist Sidewalk Pram Nineteen Seventy Something (389)
Days and Nights (400)

from One Train (1994)

One Train May Hide Another (441)
Passing Time in Skansen (443)
Energy in Sweden (444)
Poems by Ships at Sea (476)

from Straits (1998)

The Human Sacrament (511)
Vouz Êtes Plus Beaux que Vous ne Pensiez (522)
My Olivetti Speaks (534)

Friday, February 6th:

from New Addresses (2000)

To Life (592)
To the Ohio (593)
To Carelessness (599)
To World War Two (601)
To Jewishness (611)
To My Old Addresses (628)
To the Past (650)
To Various Persons Talked to All at Once (653)
To Old Age (656)

from A Possible World (2002)

Zones (677)
The Moor Not Taken (720)
Thor Not Taken (721)

Schedule Update

l-r: James Schuyler, John Ashbery & Kenneth Koch (1956)

I hope you all enjoyed our snow day, and that you're all safe and warm with power and without dented automobiles. I've been divided as to how we should proceed, but I think the best course of action is to hold over Frank O'Hara for another day, even as we start to move into our unit on Kenneth Koch, so please come prepared to discuss his work — I think that a good starting point will be extending our discussion of "Ode to Joy" into an examination of "A Step Away From Them" and "The Day Lady Died," and we can discuss any other poems you're interested in as well. Because I think that fruitful discussion is more important than taking a quiz at this point, I'm canceling the O'Hara quiz, and we'll have a quiz on Kenneth Koch's work next week. To get a jump on Koch, however, please start on this first batch of poems for tomorrow's class:

from Thank You and Other Poems (1962)

To You (80)
In Love With You (85)
The Circus (97)
The History of Jazz (102)
Collected Poems (105)
Fresh Air (122)
You Were Wearing (133)
Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams (135)
Taking a Walk with You (143)

We'll have to see if and how we'll adjust the schedule to make up for this missing class. If necessary, we can cut the class that was supposed to follow the midterm, during which we'd look at a few poems by James Schuyler and a small sample of Second Generation poets we won't be covering this quarter. It also might be possible that we'll need to cut one of the poets from the end of the quarter (I'm leaning towards Anne Waldman at this moment), and if so, we'll still spend a day looking at a few poems from her, and you'll be able to write about her for your final essay, so if you've already bought the book, it won't go to waste (however, please note that I haven't yet made the decision to cut anyone).

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Weather (Non-)Update

It looks like we'll have to wait until the morning to see whether UC will be open or closed, and I'll defer to the powers that be's judgment in that regard (though looking at the forecast, I can't imagine them thinking it'll be safe to have thousands of students commuting on icy roads and unplowed side-streets). Stay tuned to local TV, or wait for that e-mail from Greg Hand, and I'll either see you tomorrow, or on Friday.

A number of you have e-mailed about the fate of the quiz, and I'd imagine that if we have class, there will be a substantial number of students who won't be there, so I'm going to postpone the quiz until Friday, and it will cover both O'Hara and Koch. The Koch readings will be coming shortly, and I'll try to track down that article about Koch potentially forging "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island" as well.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Two More O'Hara Readings

Sorry for the delay in posting this — we've been having internet issues on and off all weekend (any other Time Warner customers dealing with this?). Here are two additional readings by Frank O'Hara. The first was recorded September 25, 1964 at SUNY Buffalo, and to my knowledge, is the best known existing reading by the late poet.

1. Mary Desti's Ass (starts in the middle) (1:24): MP3
2. Ave Maria (1:27): MP3
3. Naphtha (1:38): MP3
4. Metaphysical Poem (0:58): MP3
5. Poem ("Lana Turner has collapsed!") (0:42): MP3
6. Poem en Forme de Saw (2:08): MP3
7. Two Tragic Poems (1:42): MP3
8. Fantasy (1:33): MP3
9. Blue Territory (1:56): MP3
10. Lawrence (0:55): MP3
11. Ode to Michael Goldberg('s Birth and Other Births) (10:22): MP3
12. Political Poem on a Last Line of Pasternak (1:23): MP3
13. Poem ("Hoopla! Ya! Ya! Ya!") (0:50): MP3
14. Poem V (F) W (1:08): MP3
15. Old Copies of Life Magazine (0:59): MP3
16. Louise (1:10): MP3
17. Poem ("I don't know if I get what D.H. Lawrence is driving at") (1:40): MP3

Here's a second short recording, taken from the PBS special Poetry: USA (from which several of the videos previously posted came from), in which O'Hara reads and discusses his work:

complete recording (14:41): MP3

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

O'Hara Audio and Video

Because recordings of Frank O'Hara are fairly scarce, I'm consolidating links to a number of different recordings under this one thread.

First, there's Frank O'Hara.org's Audio Page, where you can listen to the poet read a number of his poems, along with other readers' interpretations, and a few discussions of his life and work.

UbuWeb's Frank O'Hara Page showcases a handful of recordings taken from various albums that were all part of Giorno Poetry Systems Dial-a-Poem series (a dozen records released between the early 70s and mid 80s which served as mixtapes, of sorts, for America's poetic avant-garde).

Here's a rare video of O'Hara reading "Having a Coke with You," from the WNET program USA: Poetry. The footage was shot in March 1966, and aired in September of the same year, a few months after O'Hara's tragic death.

You can see two more videos from the program on the Frank O'Hara.org Video Page.

Finally, the AMC series Mad Men gave O'Hara's popularity a little boost recently, when they featured the poet, and his collection, Meditations in an Emergency in an episode. Here's a YouTube fan video featuring a reading of the poem "Mayakovsky" taken from the show, and below, the doctored version of the book's cover the show's set design department came up with (right) along with the original version (left):

Before the week's out, I'll try to track down and post recordings of O'Hara's early 60's reading at SUNY Buffalo, which, to my knowledge, is the only full reading on tape.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Wednesday, January 21: Beginning Frank O'Hara

After spending a few minutes discussing John Ashbery's "Litany," we'll start our four-class investigation of the life and work of Frank O'Hara — who served as the social hub of the New York School's first and second generations, and was also the group's first (and perhaps most tragic) loss, when he died senselessly in the summer of 1966.

Despite a shortened writing life, O'Hara still managed a prodigious literary output, and if you think that The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara is big enough, be grateful that I didn't assign its companion volume, Poems Retrieved, which consists of all poems that hadn't yet been discovered when Donald Allen was putting together the Collected. As you'll quickly sense from reading O'Hara, his work has a immediate and occasional quality to it — his best-known single volume, Lunch Poems, is just that: poems he composed while taking a walk through New York's streets on his lunch hour, whether they were scribbled on an envelope or paper napkin, or typed out on a demonstration typewriter outside of a department store. As a result, a lot of O'Hara poems were found in drawers, coat pockets, letters to friends, etc. and no one can guess how many were lost over the years.

Over the next four classes, we'll be reading the best of what's survived. Since we have a long holiday weekend, I'll be front-loading our discussion with a few background readings. Also, since O'Hara recordings are somewhat scarce, I'll be posting them all in a separate thread. All readings are in The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara, except for the Lehman. It's also worth noting that a great many O'Hara poems have the simple title, "Poem," and so it's customary to refer to each work by the title as well as its first line:

Wednesday, January 21st

David Lehman, "Frank O'Hara: you just go on your nerve" (164)
Donald M. Allen, "Editor's Note" (v)
John Ashbery, "Introduction" (vii)
"A Short Chronology" (xiii)

Autobiographia Literaria (11)
Poem ("The eager note on my door said 'Call me,") (14)
Today (15)
Memorial Day 1950 (17)
Night Thoughts in Greenwich Village (38)
The Critic (48)
Poetry (49)
A Terrestrial Cuckoo (62)

Friday, January 23rd

"Personism: A Manifesto" (498)
"Statement for The New American Poetry" (500)

A City Winter (75)
An Abortion (80)
Chez Jane (102)
Blocks (108)
3rd Avenue El (130)
On Rachmaninoff's Birthday (159)
On Rachmaninoff's Birthday (189)
On Rachmaninoff's Birthday (190)
Meditations in an Emergency (197)
To the Harbormaster (217)
At the Old Place (223)

Monday, January 26th

Homosexuality (181)
To the Film Industry in Crisis (232)
Sleeping on the Wing (235)
Cambridge (239)
In Memory of My Feelings (252)
A Step Away From Them (256)
Why I Am Not a Painter (261)
Ode to Joy (281)
Poem ("I live above a dyke bar and I'm happy.") (286)
A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island (306)
[The Sad Thing About Life Is] (323)
The Day Lady Died (325)
Rhapsody (325)
You Are Gorgeous and I'm Coming (331)

Wednesday, January 28th

Poem ("Hate is only one of many responses") (333)
Personal Poem (335)
Naphtha (337)
Poem ("Krushchev is coming on the right day!") (340)
Poem ("Light clarity avocado salad in the morning") (350)
Having a Coke with You (360)
Ave Maria (371)
Cornkind (387)
On a Birthday of Kenneth's (396)
Mary Desti's Ass (401)
Poem ("Lana Turner has collapsed!") (449)
Lines for the Fortune Cookies (465)

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Having Issues With Posting Your Comment?

If you've having trouble posting your comment on "Litany" or "The Skaters," make sure you're accessing the blog directly (i.e. not through the Blackboard site). Last quarter, some students reported that Blogger wouldn't display the jumble of letters they'd have to post to verify their comment. If you're still having issues, please let me know, and thanks to those who've already commented.

New, Helpful Ashbery Recordings on PennSound

When I got home yesterday, I had an e-mail from one of the PennSound workstudies, Rebekah, who let me know that she'd just posted a few new recordings from John Ashbery, including two with might be of particular interest to you. You can access all of them by following this link to PennSound's front page, where you can follow the individual links in the write-up.

First, I'd recommend listening to the first few minutes of the 1999 BBC Radio 3 program. It begins with a short profile of the poet, and talks a little bit about his development. This is followed by a great reading, but for now, the profile's more than enough.

Second, if you'd like to get a lesson on how to analyze an Ashbery poem straight from the source, check out the 1966 interview on WKCR Radio, in which the host makes the poet go line-by-line through "These Lacustrine Cities," explaining his word choices, intentions, etc. You can tell that it's kind of a painful experience for Ashbery, but he dutifully takes the poem apart for listeners, and it might be helpful for you to listen. Between the reading and the explanation, it's about 15 minutes or so.

Don't forget we have a quiz tomorrow, so be prepared to answer questions on the New York School in general (keep the Lehman readings from the 2nd class in mind), on the use of forms in Ashbery (think of the poems whose forms we've talked about in class, or the forms of which I've mentioned on this blog). I'm almost 100% certain that you'll also have a short poem to analyze as well.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Friday, January 16th: Long-Form Ashbery

***As we discussed in class today, students with last names beginning with A through K will read and report on "The Skaters," while those in the L through Z group will work on "Litany. Please post your response to this thread by 10:00AM Friday***

As we wrap up our time with John Ashbery, I'd like to take a little time to look at two epic poems from his earlier poetic output: "The Skaters" and "Litany." On Wednesday, we'll divide the class in two groups, who'll each take a look at one of these poems, and who'll lead our brief in-class discussion of each (maybe ten minutes). Focus on your experience of the poem, its effects upon you, your reading process, what connections you make, etc. To facilitate that process, I'd like you to make a short post on this thread (a couple sentences, maybe more)

"The Skaters," from 1966's Rivers and Mountains, begins on page 147 in the Collected, and you can read a few useful passages about it in Lehman's book, on pages 114-116 and 120-121. Upon first reading it, Kenneth Koch likened it to T.S. Eliot's modernist classic, "The Waste Land," and indeed, the poem aims for many of the same effects: collage, juxtaposition, the alienation of contemporary life, etc. There's no recording of "The Skaters" available, but perhaps that's for the best. I'd recommend reading it (or at least part of it) out loud, to simulate the live reading effect Ashbery finds ideal.

There is, on the other hand, a recording available of "Litany," which begins on page 553 in the Collected. This is very helpful, since it's humanly impossible to read the poem as Ashbery intended it without the help of someone else. As the gloss at the start of the poem tells us, its two columns are meant to be read simultaneously and independently of one another. In 1980, Ashbery and Ann Lauterbach (shown above in split-screen) recorded the poem in its entirety, each reading one column, and with their voices split into separate stereo channels. Until Ashbery provided us with a useable copy of the recording, this strange treasure was more or less unavailable, and even Lauterbach had burned out her cassette from using it in her classes.

You can (and should) listen to the poem by following the links below. I'm also providing links for a short essay by Lauterbach about the recording process, and the write-up I did for PennSound Daily when we launched the recording:

"Litany" part 1 (15:49): MP3
"Litany" part 2 (54:40): MP3
"Litany" part 3 (14:08): MP3

"What We Know As We Know It: Reading 'Litany' with J.A."

On Wednesday, after the Martin Luther King Day holiday, we'll start our unit on Frank O'Hara.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Wednesday, January 14th: Towards the End of Ashbery

Though some of this material may still be painful . . . or confusing . . . today's class conversation was a lively and detailed close-reading of Ashbery's "What is Poetry," and I hope it'll serve as both an example of how to work your way through a poem, detail by detail, and as a succinct statement of Ashbery's poetics.

Please read these poems for Wednesday's class, and come with questions and particular pieces you'd like to discuss. I trimmed this list down a little, and a number of these poems are exceedingly brief works. I'm hoping that maybe we can analyze a few of these poems on Wednesday, and in addition to our discussion of "Litany" and "The Skaters" on Friday, we should have time to look at a few additional pieces: "Soonest Mended," perhaps "Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape" and whatever else you'd like to talk about.

from As We Know (1979)

Many Wagons Ago (660)
As We Know (661)
My Erotic Double (667)
A Box and Its Contents (675) MP3
The Cathedral Is (676) MP3
I Had Thought Things Were Going Along Well (676)
Out Over the Bay the Rattle of Firecrackers (676)
We Were on the Terrace Drinking Gin and Tonics (676)
A Love Poem (680)

from Shadow Train (1981)

Qualm (704)
Untilted (713)
Written in the Dark (716)

from A Wave (1984)

At North Farm (733) MP3
The Songs We Know Best (734) MP3
37 Haiku (762)
Cups with Broken Handles (774)

from April Galleons (1987)

A Snowball in Hell (814)

Note: "The Songs We Know Best" has rather strange and charming origins. As you read in the New Yorker profile, Ashbery's a big music fan, and it's an integral part of his writing process, however his tastes run almost exclusively towards classical music. "The Songs We Know Best," however, was inspired by a chance encounter — in a New York City taxi cab — with Peaches and Herb's 1978 chart-topper "Reunited," whose vocal melody was so infectious that Ashbery adopted it for this poem. If you're not familiar with the song, listen along for a verse or two, and then read along in your books:

Two Links for Monday: Lehman, Baseball

I'll post Wednesday's reading assignments later on today, but for now, here's a pair of quick links you might want to check out:

First, Denise sent me this video of Last Avant-Garde author, David Lehman, reading a poem he's composed for President-Elect Obama: click here to view

Second, now that the World Series is over, and I won't jinx my beloved hometown Phillies by doing so, I wanted to share this brief interview with Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Fernando Perez. Apparently, John Ashbery's the thing to read if you're trying to clear your mind during the playoffs (or maybe not, considering that they lost): click here to read

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Another Approach to Analyzing Poetry

I was flipping through Daniel Kane's What is Poetry: Conversations with the American Avant-Garde, a book of interviews with, among other big names of 20th century poetry, some of the folks we'll be studying this quarter (Ashbery, Koch, Mayer) and came across this exchange with Ann Lauterbach which might be helpful:

DK: Is there a method or series of steps that you might recommend teachers to take in presenting "On (Open)" [a poem of Lauterbach's they'd been discussing] to high school students not so familiar with poetry?

AL: A poem is not a puzzle to be solved. A poem is an experience, an event, in and of language. It should be approached as such:

What kind of event happened to you when you read this poem?
Did you get a feeling?
Did you have an idea?
Did you get reminded of something?
Did you go elsewhere, away from the familiar world into another, stranger, one?
Did you look up words and find out new meanings, as you would ask directions in a strange city?
Why do you think the poet made this word choice, and not another?
Why do you think the line is broken here, at this word, and not at another?
How is a line break in a poem different from a comma or a period in a prose sentence?

I think this is an excellent way in which to approach the poems you'll be reading this quarter. Print this list, cut it out and keep it in the back of your book, consulting it often. Ask yourself these questions, and keep track of your responses. As we discussed in class yesterday, these works — and especially more abstract ones like Ashbery's — are going not going to have clear answers, and you're going to have to rely on your own reactions, your own associations, your particular readings. Find the punctive elements in each poem which get through to you, and please share them as part of our class discussions.

On Monday, I'd like to start by talking about "What is Poetry," taking apart its images and messages, in an attempt to find some sort of answer to the question its title poses. From there, we can move on to a few other poems. Hang in there: the more exposure you get to Ashbery's work, the more the shock of the new will wear off, and the easier it will be to work through each poem. Moreover, once you've cut your teeth on Ashbery, the remaining poets will seem relatively straightforward by comparison.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Monday, January 12th: John Ashbery Day 2

We last left John Ashbery with a selection of poems from his 1966 collection, Rivers and Mountains, a book we'll return to on our final day with the poet, when we look at his long-form poem, "The Skaters," which is a centerpiece of that volume.

1966 is a transitional year for the New York School. Frank O'Hara, who formed the social center of the group, died in July of that year, leaving a palpable void, and Paul Blackburn started the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery — two events which would help give rise to a second generation of poets like Ted Berrigan, Anne Waldman, Lewis Warsh, Bernadette Mayer and Ron Padgett.

For Monday, you'll be reading from a trio of books Ashbery published in the 1970s, a decade in which he moved from poetic upstart to an established literary figure. As before, recordings are available for a number of the poems, so be sure to listen along as you read.

from The Double Dream of Spring (1970)

Soonest Mended (184) MP3
It Was Raining in the Capital (187) MP3
Decoy (195)
Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape (206) MP3 (beginning cut off)
Parergon (212) MP3

from Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975)

As One Put Drunk into the Packet-Boat (427)
Forties Flick (429) MP3
Scheherazade (432) MP3
Mixed Feelings (455) MP3
The One Things That Can Save America (457)

from Houseboat Days (1977)

The Other Tradition (491) MP3
Pyrography (495) MP3 (ends prematurely)
Crazy Weather (503)
Wet Casements (508) MP3
Daffy Duck in Hollywood (510) MP3 (beginning cut off)
Lost and Found and Lost Again (514)
And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name (519) MP3
What is Poetry (520) MP3

Notes:

Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape: This is one of the better-known examples of the sestina, a form which repeats the end words in its first stanza throughout a number of patterns

Pyrography: see also Larry Rivers' portrait of Ashbery which has the same name, and incorporates the opening lines of the poem

Daffy Duck in Hollywood: though the poem takes its name from this Looney Tunes short:

it probably betrays the influence of this Daffy Duck cartoon as well:

Thursday, January 8, 2009

The New York School of Painters (a.k.a. Abstract Expressionism)

As we discussed in yesterday's class, the New York School of poets got their name as a marketing stunt attempting to align them with the New York School of painters, their friends and compatriots, who were as much on the cutting edge of contemporary painting as the poets were on the cutting edge of contemporary literature. Ashbery, OHara, Koch and Schuyler hung out with these painters at the Cedar Bar, curated shows of their work at MoMA, wrote about their paintings, and collaborated with them on visual projects and plays.

Below, you'll find a small selection of works by a few New York School painters. What I want you to keep in mind here is that these aren't figurative works, they're not intended to be a paintings of something, but rather paintings in and of themselves: works which explore the potential of painting as an activity. In a similar fashion, the poems you'll be reading over the next ten weeks aren't often concerned with putting across a particular message or revealing a particular truth, as much as they're exploring the different things a writer can do with language.

(click on individual photos for larger images)

Jackson Pollock

Number 1, 1948

Untitled (Green Silver), 1949

Franz Kline

Chief, 1950

Painting Number 2, 1954

Willem de Kooning

Pink Angels, 1945

Woman I, 1950-52

Larry Rivers

Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1953

Pyrography: John Ashbery working, 1984 (you'll read Ashbery's poem of the same name next week)

Grace Hartigan

Untitled

Salute: the Canal to the Sky, 1960

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Analyzing Poetry: the Five-Step Approach

Most students are far more comfortable reading and discussing prose than poetry, though that's usually a product of their lack of familiarity with the latter. We'll be dealing exclusively with poetry this quarter, and some pretty challenging poetry to boot, so it's best to start developing your analytic abilities now.

This is a quick and simple five-step plan that should be fairly helpful as you work your way through the readings. While the poetry of the New York School has very different aims from traditional poetry, and not all of these characteristics will fit, it's a good start:

1. What is happening in the poem?

Literally: What is the poem’s action?
Figuratively: What metaphors drive the poem’s message?

2. Comment on the poem’s music: What do you hear in this poem?

the poet’s voice, the language used
use of rhyme and near rhyme
the poem’s rhythms, its cadence, its momentum
use of alliteration and assonance
performative enjambments (line breaks)

(All of these elements add emphasis to certain words, images and ideas. Why?)

3. Are there any memorable images? What do you see in this poem?

4. What general themes does the poet touch upon?

5. Ultimately, what is the poet/poem trying to say?

If you're interested in a far more comprehensive introduction to poetry, definitely check out Edward Hirsch's multi-part essay "How to Read a Poem (and Fall in Love with Poetry)," available through the Poetry Foundation website.

Also, here's a link to a poetics glossary to help you sort out any unfamiliar terms you might come across, and a primer on poetic forms and techniques, which will be particularly useful, as poets like Ashbery, Koch, Berrigan and Mayer will get a lot of use out of forms like the sonnet, the sestina and the pantoum.

Here are a few poems we can read and listen to in class, and take a shot at analyzing:

Ted Berrigan: Whitman in Black

For my sins I live in the city of New York
Whitman’s city lived in in Melville’s senses, urban inferno
Where love can stay for only a minute
Then has to go, to get some work done
Here the detective and the small-time criminal are one
& tho the cases get solved the machine continues to run
Big Town will wear you down
But it’s only here you can turn around 360 degrees
And everything is clear from here at the center
To every point along the circle of horizon
Here you can see for miles & miles & miles
Be born again daily, die nightly for a change of style
Here clearly here; see with affection; bleakly cultivate compassion
Whitman’s walk unchanged after its fashion.

(Whitman in Black: MP3)

Frank O'Hara: Poem

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

(Poem: MP3)

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Friday, January 9th: Introducing John Ashbery

Seventy-one years old and still going strong, John Ashbery is the sole living member of the New York School's first generation, and an elder statesman of American poetics. It's been more than fifty years since his debut collection, Some Trees (1956) — which W.H. Auden selected as that year's winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize (narrowly edging out his friend, Frank O'Hara's manuscript) — and thirty-four years since Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975), which won the triple-crown of American literary honors (the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award), yet Ashbery's poetic development continues unabated.

We'll be focusing almost exclusively on poems from the first three decades of Ashbery's writing life, as contained in the recently-published collection, Collected Poems 1956-1987. Recordings of most of these works are available on PennSound's John Ashbery author page, and I cannot suggest strongly enough that you listen along with these MP3s as you read. I'll provide streaming links to one recording for each poem, however you're likely to find multiple versions of some of his best known poems in our archives, so please make use of those variations as you reread. On our last day addressing Ashbery, we'll read a few of his more recent poems.

Because it's not likely that everyone will be able to get their hands on The Last Avant-Garde in time for our section on Ashbery, I'm posting an excellent profile of the poet which originally appeared in The New Yorker in 2005:

Larissa MacFarquhar, "Present Waking Life: Becoming John Ashbery" (PDF)

Please read that essay for Friday, along with the following poems in Collected Poems:

from Some Trees (1956)

Two Scenes (3) MP3
Popular Songs (3) MP3
The Instruction Manual (5) MP3
Glazunoviana (10) MP3
The Picture of Little J.A. in a Prospect of Flowers (13)
Sonnet ("Each servant stamps the reader with a look") (18) MP3
And You Know (29) MP3

from The Tennis Court Oath (1962)

The Tennis Court Oath (43) MP3
"They Dream Only of America" (44) MP3
Thoughts of a Young Girl (45) MP3
"How Much Longer Will I Be Able to Inhabit the Diving Sepulcher . . ." (56) MP3
A White Paper (63)
Our Youth (71) MP3

from Rivers and Mountains (1966)

These Lacustrine Cities (125) MP3
Rivers and Mountains (126) MP3
Into the Dusk-Charged Air (131) MP3
The Ecclesiast (135) MP3
To a Waterfowl (922) MP3

Most of these recordings were taken from Ashbery's September 16, 1963 reading at the Living Theatre in New York City, which served as a triumphant homecoming for the poet after five year of living in Paris. You can listen to the rest of the reading here, and read the PennSound Daily entry discussing that historic recording here. Also, be sure to take a few minutes to listen to Kenneth Koch's introductory comments (linked below):

Kenneth Koch introduces John Ashbery: MP3

Yet Another Lehman Update

The UC Bookstore informs me that they should be getting copies of The Last Avant-Garde by January 15th, which will be in time to start our O'Hara unit. Though we won't be able to consult the book for our unit on Ashbery, I've already got another source lined up for background info on him, so I think we should be fine. Tomorrow, we can take a tally of how many of you have already ordered (or already have) the book, and I'll pass that number along to the bookstore so they can be sure to order enough copies.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Update: the Last Avant-Garde

I still haven't heard back from either bookstore in regards to the availability of David Lehman's The Last Avant-Garde, but it looks as if you can read the majority of Wednesday's assigned chapters online.

Jacket has the entire introduction available on their website: click here
Amazon has a large chunk of the first chapter available (it cuts off in mid-sentence, but is better than nothing at all): click here

For those of you who don't have the book, I'm adding a pair of new links which will also help provide a little background information, though they're no substitute for the Lehman book:

A Brief Guide to the New York School: click here
The Artists and Poets of the New York School: click here

Please make sure you get your hands on a copy of the book, even if it won't come in time for Wedneday. You'll need to read the chapters on Ashbery, O'Hara and Koch when we focus on each poet.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Wednesday, January 7th: The New York School's Origins

For Wednesday's class, you'll want to begin your acquaintance with the poets of the New York School by reading the opening chapters of David Lehman's The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets, which will serve as our guide throughout the quarter.

Lehman's a somewhat thorny personage, who would have you believe that he was a vital member of the First Generation of poets (in reality he was a student of Kenneth Koch's in the 1960s and perhaps a minor figure between the Second and Third Generations), but his history of this influential group of poets is the very best. Ignore all the times he casually drops the fact that he was having lunch with John Ashbery, or popped into Koch's office for a cup of coffee, and you'll be fine.

To start off our discussion, I'd like you to read Lehman's introduction (pg. 1) and chapter 1, "The Pursuit of Happiness" (pg. 19). Though it's optional, I'd also encourage you to read chapter 2, "The Band of Rivals" (pg. 65) — it adds about 30 pages, but will give you an even fuller understanding of the lives of these four poets, and Lehman's prose is an easy read.

We'll spend most of the class discussing commonalities between the life stories of Ashbery, O'Hara and Koch, and their early artistic development. At the end of class, we'll spend a few minutes on a quick primer on how to do close readings of poems.

Course Description

l-r: (standing) Patsy Southgate, Bill Berkson, John Ashbery; (seated) Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch

ENGL 202 – 003: Topics in Literature: The New York School of Poetry

We’ll study the historical development and evolution of The New York School from its 1950s core of John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch and James Schuyler through to a second generation of 1960s poets, including Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, Ron Padgett, Bernadette Mayer, Joe Brainard, Anne Waldman and Lewis Warsh, and on to those contemporary poets who continue to redefine New York School poetics in . Other topics discussed might include Donald Allen’s The New American Poetry: 1945-1960, The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery, the small press tradition, queer poetics, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry and the anthology wars.

Course Requirements and Policies

Attendance/Lateness: Attendance and punctuality are mandatory. Since our work will largely consist of group discussion, missing (or arriving late for) a class can have serious and detrimental effects on your overall performance. You will automatically fail the class if you exceed five absences, though any missed classes will likely have adverse affects on your final grade. Please note that absences are absences—sick days (with or without a doctor’s note) are no different than days that you don’t feel like getting out of bed—and the only exception to this rule will be when classes are officially cancelled due to inclement weather. The attendance policy for this class will be strictly enforced. Please show respect and courtesy to your peers by arriving to each class on time.

Participation: Because so much of our work this quarter will be collaborative, participation—both in the classroom and on the course blog—is vital and necessary. Freely and comfortably sharing your insights, opinions and perspectives (as well as your questions) will be an invaluable part of our fuller understanding of the texts we’ll examine. For this reason, class participation constitutes a full 15% of the final grade. Do not underestimate the importance of this percentage: a zero can have disastrous effects upon your performance.

Course Blog: In lieu of Blackboard, I’ll be using this blog to make announcements, distribute handouts as PDFs, and share supplementary materials—including useful links, podcasts and MP3 recordings, as well as YouTube videos—which will help to broaden your class experience this semester. It’s in your best interest to check the blog one a daily basis, and to simplify that process, I’ve added links in the sidebar which will allow you subscribe to the blog’s xml feed through your preferred feed aggregator (iGoogle, Google Reader, etc.), or sign up to receive e-mail updates via FeedBurner when new posts are added.

I’d like this blog to be a useful venue for students to discuss our readings, ask questions and share links via the comments section. Please be sure to include your full name at the bottom of your message when posting a comment. Regular activity on our course blog can only help your class participation grade.

Quizzes: Over the course of the quarter, you can expect a number of short, unannounced quizzes—approximately one per week, or one per author/text—which will serve as a measure of your reading comprehension and retention. Missed quizzes cannot be made up, and will aversely affect your final grade. A hint: we’re far less likely to have a quiz if the class is having a lively and engaged conversation about the day’s readings.

Technology: In theory, technology is a wonderful thing, but in the classroom, it can be a distraction. Please make sure that your cell phone is turned off (or at the very least in silent mode) before class begins, and keep it in your bag throughout. Texting during class will not be tolerated, and if done during a quiz or exam, will be presumed to be cheating (with appropriate consequences). Finally, the use of laptops for note-taking during class is a privilege, not a right—if I believe you're using your laptop to check e-mail, surf the internet or play solitaire during class, you'll be forbidden from using it for the rest of the quarter.

Communication: Please make use of my posted office hours, the time before and after class and e-mail to discuss your performance in the course, pose questions you might have, etc. If you're having trouble, doing poorly on quizzes or just not getting the readings, it's better to ask for help sooner rather than later. Unofficially, you should meet with me at least once during the quarter.

Plagiarism: At this stage of your academic career, you are probably well-acquainted with UC’s Academic Honesty Policy and Student Code of Conduct, however after the winter break, it might be advantageous to re-orient yourself with those policies now, as you start your classes.

Plagiarism, defined as “the appropriation of information, ideas, or the language of other persons or writers and the submission of them as one's own to satisfy the requirements of a course,” can take many guises, including cheating on a quiz, cutting-and-pasting information found on the web, failing to properly cite sources or fabricating them entirely. Any student found guilty of plagiarism, in any form, will automatically fail this course. Disciplinary action will also result, including an official record of this offense, potentially affecting your academic future.

The Writing Center: The Writing Center is a valuable and free resource available to all UC students. Writing Fellows are available to help students at all stages of the writing process from brainstorming to drafting, as well as with editing essays. I strongly encourage you to have a tutor review all the writing you do for this course. Please visit their website for hours of operation, writing resources and more information.

Special Needs Statement: If you have any special needs related to your participation and performance in this course, please speak to me as soon as possible. In consultation with Disability Services, we can make reasonable provisions to ensure your ability to succeed in this class and meet its goals.

Final Grade: Your final grade will be calculated according to the following percentages:

Midterm Exam: 25%
Final Essay: 35%
Quizzes: 25%
Class Participation: 15%

Paper Format: All worked handed in for this class must be typed, double-spaced, and MUST be stapled. Use 12-point, Times New Roman font for each assignment, and be sure to use the MLA header. Late work will be penalized, losing a full letter grade for each class missed. If you will miss a class when an assignment is due, you can drop it off in my mailbox or at my office beforehand, or have a friend bring it to class. I will not accept work via e-mail. Any divergence from this policy will be done solely at my discretion.

Book List

The eight books you'll require for this quarter break down into three categories. This is also the order in which we'll address the authors, starting with Lehman and Ashbery, so be sure you've purchased the books in time for our discussions.

Historical Overview

David Lehman, The Last Avant-Garde: the Making of the New York School of Poets

First Generation Poets

John Asbhery, Collected Poems 1956-1987
Frank O’Hara, The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara
Kenneth Koch, The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch

Second Generation Poets

Ted Berrigan, The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan
Alice Notley, Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems 1970-2005
Anne Waldman, Helping the Dreamer: New & Selected Poems 1966-1988
Bernadette Mayer, A Bernadette Mayer Reader

Books have been ordered at both the UC and DuBois Bookstores. You can also find used copies from sites including Small Press Distribution, Powell's, Alibris, ABE Books and Half.com, as well as sellers on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Class Schedule (Subject to Change)

Given the painful brevity of the quarter, we don't have the opportunity to spend quite as much time with each poet as I'd like, and there are a number of poets I've had to leave out entirely (Barbara Guest, Ron Padgett, Joe Brainard, Lewis Warsh, Ron Silliman, any Third-Generation New York School poets), or address in one class (James Schuyler, Charles Bernstein, Hannah Weiner), however, I believe we'll still be able to get a full sense of the historical development of the New York School aesthetic, along with its evolution through a second generation of poets centered around the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery, and the mid-70s innovation of Language Poetry. Though we'll move on from a given poet after a few classes, I hope you'll be able to keep their particular styles in mind in order to trace their influence from one author to the next.

Specific readings for each poet will be given in advance of their unit, and the poems themselves will be augmented with readings in Lehman's The Last Avant-Garde, recordings from PennSound and other materials.

Week 1

Monday, Jan. 5: Introductions, syllabus, course outline and goals for the quarter
Wednesday, Jan. 7: Introduction to the New York School
Friday, Jan. 9: John Ashbery, Day 1

Week 2

Monday, Jan. 12: John Ashbery, Day 2
Wednesday, Jan. 14: John Ashbery, Day 3
Friday, Jan. 16: John Ashbery, Day 4

Week 3

Monday, Jan. 19: No Class: Martin Luther King Day
Wednesday, Jan. 21: Frank O'Hara, Day 1
Friday, Jan. 23: Frank O'Hara, Day 2

Week 4

Monday, Jan. 26: Frank O'Hara, Day 3
Wednesday, Jan. 28: Frank O'Hara, Day 4
Friday, Jan. 30: Kenneth Koch, Day 1

Week 5

Monday, Feb. 2: Kenneth Koch, Day 2
Wednesday, Feb. 4: Kenneth Koch, Day 3
Friday, Feb. 6: Kenneth Koch, Day 4

Week 6

Monday, Feb. 9: Midterm Exam
Wednesday, Feb. 11: James Schuyler; First Generation into Second Generation
Friday, Feb. 13: Ted Berrigan, Day 1

Week 7

Monday, Feb. 16: Ted Berrigan, Day 2
Wednesday, Feb. 18: Ted Berrigan, Day 3
Friday, Feb. 20: Ted Berrigan, Day 4 / Alice Notley, Day 1

Week 8

Monday, Feb. 23: Alice Notley, Day 2
Wednesday, Feb. 25: Alice Notley, Day 3
Friday, Feb. 27: Alice Notley, Day 4

Week 9

Monday, Mar. 2: Anne Waldman, Day 1
Wednesday, Mar. 4: Anne Waldman, Day 2
Friday, Mar. 6: Anne Waldman, Day 3 / Bernadette Mayer, Day 1

Week 10

Monday, Mar. 9: Bernadette Mayer, Day 2
Wednesday, Mar. 11: Bernadette Mayer, Day 3
Friday, Mar. 13: New York School into Language Poetics; Charles Bernstein; Hannah Weiner

Final Paper: date, topics to be announced