Memoirous

at Great Spruce Head Island Just last Friday I was thinking: We won’t have John Ashbery with us too much longer. Then came the news . . . https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/arts/john-ashbery-dead-prize-winning-poet.html I cannot describe how this feels. I can count now on one hand the number of poets that might be described as belonging to the New York School or even the Second Generation that are still with us. John Ashbery’s passing closes a circle. All this as I’m reading and re-reading James Schuyler’s diary, letters—many citations and addressed to John Ashbery. This summer I spent a week at Great Spruce Head Island and visited the tennis courts where he played, walked the path from the boat house to the big house that he must have trod, swam the coves he most likely swam in—during a vital and sunny part of his life. As I Googled him last Friday and stared into images of a very old Ashbery I was reminded of that young man who drove with Jane Freilicher to Mexico, w...

Attention Equals Life Andrew Epstein I’m more than halfway through Attention Equals Life by Andrew Epstein, also the blogmaster at https://newyorkschoolpoets.wordpress.com/ , where he explores the connections between poetry, attention, and the everyday/period between the 1950s and 1970s. The first few pages are devoted to distractions. Today, more than ever, it is almost impossible to focus because of the influx of media and advertising. Yeah, I hate it too. The technology I turned to a few years ago to avoid commercials is now saturated with them. Pandora, YouTube, Facebook. And, what’s worse, the commercials look like content! So even if you are paying attention it does almost no good. We’re faked out by fake news, alt facts, and reality TV stars in the White House. Andrew specializes on the New York School (of poets) where—and I think he’ll agree with me—the poets of the New School were easily unashamedly distracted. Here is one of my favorite pictures: F...

I’ve discovered a great blog called Locus Solus: The New York School of Poets . Andrew Epstein, an Assoicate Professor in the English Department at Florida State University Tallahassee, Florida authors it. A lot of his research and writing centers upon the New York School of Poets. He has authored Beautiful Enemies: Friendship and Postwar American Poetry  (Oxford University Press), which focuses on Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, and Amiri Baraka, and a second book,  Attention Equals Life: The Pursuit of the Everyday in Contemporary Poetry and Culture , Oxford University Press (in July 2016). I should never be surprised at how wide the circle of friends and acquaintances were—the NY School reached into the emerging youth culture of the time and informed art on many levels. So, unsurprisingly, there is a connection between the NY School and the late Leonard Cohen. Cohen was 82, Frank O’Hara would have been 90, Keneth Koch 91, Jane Freilicher 92, and James Schu...