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).