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.