WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.950 align:middle line:90%


00:00:00.950 --> 00:00:06.218 align:middle line:84%
It's probably-- I don't want to
assume that everyone knows who

00:00:06.218 --> 00:00:07.760 align:middle line:84%
the New York School
Poets are, so I'm

00:00:07.760 --> 00:00:13.880 align:middle line:84%
going to do a little bit of
outlining some of the stuff.

00:00:13.880 --> 00:00:15.650 align:middle line:90%
So it's not actually a school.

00:00:15.650 --> 00:00:17.880 align:middle line:84%
It's a school in the sense
that the School of Paris

00:00:17.880 --> 00:00:19.010 align:middle line:90%
is a school.

00:00:19.010 --> 00:00:21.530 align:middle line:90%
It's an aesthetic movement.

00:00:21.530 --> 00:00:23.690 align:middle line:84%
But what it is is
a group of friends.

00:00:23.690 --> 00:00:26.630 align:middle line:84%
Like many aesthetic movements,
it's composed of a group

00:00:26.630 --> 00:00:32.420 align:middle line:84%
of people who became friends
and their relationships in some

00:00:32.420 --> 00:00:34.970 align:middle line:84%
ways have the intensity
of-- one feels,

00:00:34.970 --> 00:00:36.470 align:middle line:84%
because they all
lived in New York--

00:00:36.470 --> 00:00:39.200 align:middle line:84%
had the intensity
of a village life.

00:00:39.200 --> 00:00:43.700 align:middle line:84%
It actually feels very
intimate and small scale.

00:00:43.700 --> 00:00:46.040 align:middle line:84%
So the four main
figures in the movement

00:00:46.040 --> 00:00:51.950 align:middle line:84%
are Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery,
Kenneth Koch, and James Skyler.

00:00:51.950 --> 00:00:57.430 align:middle line:84%
Ashbery, O'Hara, and Koch
were all undergraduates

00:00:57.430 --> 00:01:01.550 align:middle line:90%
at Harvard in the late 1940s.

00:01:01.550 --> 00:01:07.420 align:middle line:84%
And they all worked, I believe--
they were not all there

00:01:07.420 --> 00:01:09.310 align:middle line:90%
simultaneously.

00:01:09.310 --> 00:01:15.290 align:middle line:84%
I believe that Koch and
Ashbery were there initially.

00:01:15.290 --> 00:01:18.710 align:middle line:84%
Koch left to go to New York,
Ashbery was still there,

00:01:18.710 --> 00:01:20.180 align:middle line:90%
and then O'Hara came.

00:01:20.180 --> 00:01:24.770 align:middle line:84%
And there's a famous letter
in which O'Hara writes to Koch

00:01:24.770 --> 00:01:30.620 align:middle line:84%
and says, I believe
we've got a contender.

00:01:30.620 --> 00:01:37.220 align:middle line:84%
He's just met O'Hara and
he recognizes his genius.

00:01:37.220 --> 00:01:41.720 align:middle line:84%
But what's interesting
is that O'Hara and Koch

00:01:41.720 --> 00:01:44.600 align:middle line:84%
had been in the
service in World War II

00:01:44.600 --> 00:01:49.130 align:middle line:84%
so they were slightly older,
actually, than Ashbery.

00:01:49.130 --> 00:01:52.430 align:middle line:84%
And they were older, obviously,
than a lot of undergraduates.

00:01:52.430 --> 00:01:54.740 align:middle line:84%
But they're typical
of that generation

00:01:54.740 --> 00:01:58.010 align:middle line:84%
of servicemen
returning after the war

00:01:58.010 --> 00:02:02.000 align:middle line:90%
and resuming their education.

00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:08.060 align:middle line:84%
All had moved to New
York by the early 1950s.

00:02:08.060 --> 00:02:14.210 align:middle line:84%
And in a way, they're sort
of simultaneously outsiders

00:02:14.210 --> 00:02:16.320 align:middle line:90%
and insiders.

00:02:16.320 --> 00:02:18.620 align:middle line:84%
They're outsiders in the
sense that three of them

00:02:18.620 --> 00:02:22.160 align:middle line:84%
are gay at a time when
it was quite dangerous,

00:02:22.160 --> 00:02:24.920 align:middle line:90%
actually, to be openly gay.

00:02:24.920 --> 00:02:27.590 align:middle line:90%
O'Hara, Ashbery, and Skyler.

00:02:27.590 --> 00:02:31.018 align:middle line:84%
And then Koch, as
a Jew at Harvard--

00:02:31.018 --> 00:02:32.810 align:middle line:84%
one of the things to
remember about Harvard

00:02:32.810 --> 00:02:37.370 align:middle line:84%
is that it was, I think in
the early 1940s they still

00:02:37.370 --> 00:02:42.620 align:middle line:84%
had quotas on Jews
who could enroll

00:02:42.620 --> 00:02:45.380 align:middle line:90%
as students at the university.

00:02:45.380 --> 00:02:49.430 align:middle line:84%
So in some sense,
there's this sense--

00:02:49.430 --> 00:02:52.250 align:middle line:84%
and he had come from Cincinnati
so he wasn't an East Coast

00:02:52.250 --> 00:02:54.480 align:middle line:90%
person to begin with.

00:02:54.480 --> 00:02:57.650 align:middle line:84%
So there's some sense
of them a little bit

00:02:57.650 --> 00:02:59.630 align:middle line:84%
on the margins of
things, but they're also

00:02:59.630 --> 00:03:02.780 align:middle line:84%
insiders in the sense that
once they move to New York,

00:03:02.780 --> 00:03:07.490 align:middle line:84%
they're very much a part
of what was probably

00:03:07.490 --> 00:03:10.480 align:middle line:84%
one of the most amazing art
scenes of the 20th century.

00:03:10.480 --> 00:03:13.700 align:middle line:84%
And I always tell my students,
if you could pick a time

00:03:13.700 --> 00:03:16.610 align:middle line:84%
to live in, you either
want to live in Paris

00:03:16.610 --> 00:03:18.650 align:middle line:84%
in the first couple of
decades of the century

00:03:18.650 --> 00:03:22.730 align:middle line:84%
or you'd want to live in New
York in the 1940s, late 1940s

00:03:22.730 --> 00:03:25.700 align:middle line:84%
and into the '50s
and early '60s.

00:03:25.700 --> 00:03:27.720 align:middle line:84%
And so they're part
of this whole world,

00:03:27.720 --> 00:03:30.920 align:middle line:84%
and it's the world of the
abstract expressionists,

00:03:30.920 --> 00:03:35.720 align:middle line:84%
the action painters, and then
a little bit later pop artists,

00:03:35.720 --> 00:03:41.570 align:middle line:84%
so it's people like Franz Kline,
Jackson Pollock, de Kooning,

00:03:41.570 --> 00:03:45.080 align:middle line:90%
Larry Rivers, Red Grooms.

00:03:45.080 --> 00:03:48.620 align:middle line:84%
And then a lot of musicians,
people like John Cage,

00:03:48.620 --> 00:03:51.170 align:middle line:84%
for instance, are
around at the same time.

00:03:51.170 --> 00:03:54.410 align:middle line:84%
All the Beat poets, they're
kind of in and out of the scene.

00:03:54.410 --> 00:03:56.930 align:middle line:84%
O'Hara and Ginsberg
became very, very close.

00:03:56.930 --> 00:04:00.950 align:middle line:90%


00:04:00.950 --> 00:04:03.380 align:middle line:84%
There's this sort of cross
fertilization of ideas

00:04:03.380 --> 00:04:05.870 align:middle line:90%
that are going on constantly.

00:04:05.870 --> 00:04:08.540 align:middle line:84%
A lot of them met
at the Cedar Tavern

00:04:08.540 --> 00:04:11.060 align:middle line:84%
which is a very famous
bar that all the painters

00:04:11.060 --> 00:04:12.290 align:middle line:90%
and writers hung out with.

00:04:12.290 --> 00:04:14.900 align:middle line:84%
And you really had-- when you
read interviews with these

00:04:14.900 --> 00:04:18.589 align:middle line:84%
people, you really have
this sense that they both--

00:04:18.589 --> 00:04:20.420 align:middle line:84%
that the painters
and the writers

00:04:20.420 --> 00:04:22.250 align:middle line:84%
were really listening
to each other

00:04:22.250 --> 00:04:26.060 align:middle line:84%
and really got a huge
amount from each other.

00:04:26.060 --> 00:04:32.000 align:middle line:84%
O'Hara and Ashbery became fairly
well recognized and important

00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:35.870 align:middle line:84%
art critics, actually, at a
certain point in the 1950s.

00:04:35.870 --> 00:04:38.510 align:middle line:84%
And O'Hara,
eventually he started

00:04:38.510 --> 00:04:44.690 align:middle line:84%
working at the Museum of
Modern Art as did Skyler.

00:04:44.690 --> 00:04:48.290 align:middle line:84%
O'Hara eventually became
a curator at the museum

00:04:48.290 --> 00:04:51.350 align:middle line:84%
and he remained a
curator until he died.

00:04:51.350 --> 00:04:55.250 align:middle line:84%
He died tragically
in 1965, I believe.

00:04:55.250 --> 00:04:58.190 align:middle line:90%
It could have been maybe '66.

00:04:58.190 --> 00:05:03.200 align:middle line:84%
He was at a party late
at night on Fire Island

00:05:03.200 --> 00:05:05.600 align:middle line:90%
and there had been a--

00:05:05.600 --> 00:05:08.600 align:middle line:84%
somebody's car, the
tire had gone flat

00:05:08.600 --> 00:05:10.610 align:middle line:84%
and they got out
to change it and he

00:05:10.610 --> 00:05:14.060 align:middle line:84%
was hit by another car
that came over a dune

00:05:14.060 --> 00:05:15.560 align:middle line:84%
and he died a couple
of days later.

00:05:15.560 --> 00:05:21.260 align:middle line:90%


00:05:21.260 --> 00:05:24.770 align:middle line:84%
The Black Mountain poets, the
Beats, and the New York School

00:05:24.770 --> 00:05:28.400 align:middle line:84%
Poets were all part
of a continuum,

00:05:28.400 --> 00:05:34.040 align:middle line:84%
as I said, on the left
wing of American poetry.

00:05:34.040 --> 00:05:36.440 align:middle line:84%
And that continuum
is represented

00:05:36.440 --> 00:05:41.930 align:middle line:84%
by an anthology that
comes out in 1960, which

00:05:41.930 --> 00:05:47.660 align:middle line:84%
is Don Allen's The New American
Poetry 1945-1960, which

00:05:47.660 --> 00:05:50.930 align:middle line:84%
was a groundbreaking
anthology, hugely influential,

00:05:50.930 --> 00:05:53.090 align:middle line:84%
and contained almost
all of these figures

00:05:53.090 --> 00:05:55.560 align:middle line:90%
from these movements.

00:05:55.560 --> 00:05:58.790 align:middle line:84%
So there is this sense
of, again, they're

00:05:58.790 --> 00:06:03.920 align:middle line:84%
part of something that while its
scale isn't huge in comparison

00:06:03.920 --> 00:06:07.880 align:middle line:84%
to the rest of the country,
it has an intensity that

00:06:07.880 --> 00:06:13.010 align:middle line:84%
makes it feel like the most
important thing in the world

00:06:13.010 --> 00:06:16.280 align:middle line:84%
and it's the most
important place to be.

00:06:16.280 --> 00:06:19.550 align:middle line:84%
And there's a wonderful
book if you're

00:06:19.550 --> 00:06:22.670 align:middle line:84%
interested in reading
more about them

00:06:22.670 --> 00:06:24.763 align:middle line:84%
and about this particular
time in New York.

00:06:24.763 --> 00:06:26.180 align:middle line:84%
It's a book by
David Lehman called

00:06:26.180 --> 00:06:29.220 align:middle line:84%
The Last Avant-Garde Garde
which I would recommend,

00:06:29.220 --> 00:06:32.960 align:middle line:84%
which is both a kind of
analytical book about the work

00:06:32.960 --> 00:06:35.750 align:middle line:84%
that was being done then
by somebody who's not

00:06:35.750 --> 00:06:37.550 align:middle line:84%
an academic critic,
somebody who's

00:06:37.550 --> 00:06:40.460 align:middle line:84%
just a really smart guy who can
talk about this stuff really

00:06:40.460 --> 00:06:43.670 align:middle line:84%
well and also a biographical
book about the lives

00:06:43.670 --> 00:06:45.230 align:middle line:90%
of these people.

00:06:45.230 --> 00:06:52.070 align:middle line:84%
So I want to briefly, before
we get to the poems, really

00:06:52.070 --> 00:06:54.855 align:middle line:84%
quickly just outline the
aesthetic values of the New

00:06:54.855 --> 00:06:55.355 align:middle line:90%
York School.

00:06:55.355 --> 00:06:58.130 align:middle line:90%


00:06:58.130 --> 00:07:03.080 align:middle line:90%
So talk is at the heart of it.

00:07:03.080 --> 00:07:05.120 align:middle line:84%
Tony Hoagland has a
great phrase for it.

00:07:05.120 --> 00:07:06.260 align:middle line:90%
Fast talking.

00:07:06.260 --> 00:07:08.120 align:middle line:90%
There's a kind of speed to it.

00:07:08.120 --> 00:07:14.280 align:middle line:84%
There's a kind of glibness
and a sense of American idiom,

00:07:14.280 --> 00:07:17.030 align:middle line:84%
a real sense of
playfulness, and a sort

00:07:17.030 --> 00:07:21.380 align:middle line:90%
of pleasure in that idiom.

00:07:21.380 --> 00:07:24.980 align:middle line:84%
You also have this sense of
personality expressing itself

00:07:24.980 --> 00:07:26.810 align:middle line:90%
through talk.

00:07:26.810 --> 00:07:29.300 align:middle line:84%
And it seems utterly
American in that way

00:07:29.300 --> 00:07:31.760 align:middle line:90%
and completely down to Earth.

00:07:31.760 --> 00:07:34.970 align:middle line:84%
The talk in itself
pegs the whole thing.

00:07:34.970 --> 00:07:39.230 align:middle line:84%
It strips a lot of rhetorical
surface out of the poetry.

00:07:39.230 --> 00:07:42.380 align:middle line:84%
So in a sense, it's completely
antithetical to a lot

00:07:42.380 --> 00:07:46.280 align:middle line:84%
of the work that was being
done in the 1940s and 1950s

00:07:46.280 --> 00:07:49.100 align:middle line:84%
by mainstream American
poets who were very

00:07:49.100 --> 00:07:53.570 align:middle line:84%
influenced by something called
New Criticism, which basically

00:07:53.570 --> 00:07:59.480 align:middle line:84%
argued that in order for
a poem to be a good poem,

00:07:59.480 --> 00:08:02.970 align:middle line:84%
it needed a very
dense sonic surface.

00:08:02.970 --> 00:08:09.350 align:middle line:84%
It needed a lot of
levels of information

00:08:09.350 --> 00:08:19.640 align:middle line:84%
that is encoded in allusion and
irony and a sense of restraint

00:08:19.640 --> 00:08:20.420 align:middle line:90%
also.

00:08:20.420 --> 00:08:23.180 align:middle line:84%
A certain kind of slight
formality, I guess

00:08:23.180 --> 00:08:24.740 align:middle line:84%
would be the right
way to say it.

00:08:24.740 --> 00:08:27.710 align:middle line:84%
So form and shaping in
a traditional sense,

00:08:27.710 --> 00:08:29.660 align:middle line:90%
metered, rhymed often.

00:08:29.660 --> 00:08:33.140 align:middle line:84%
So what the New York
School Poets are doing

00:08:33.140 --> 00:08:34.940 align:middle line:90%
is opposed to that.

00:08:34.940 --> 00:08:40.070 align:middle line:84%
And their influences
leapfrog backwards

00:08:40.070 --> 00:08:43.159 align:middle line:84%
towards the early
part of the century.

00:08:43.159 --> 00:08:45.560 align:middle line:84%
In particular, the
French poet Apollinaire.

00:08:45.560 --> 00:08:48.740 align:middle line:90%
For O'Hara it becomes a huge.

00:08:48.740 --> 00:08:52.490 align:middle line:84%
And Ashbery is fluent in French
so he's reading constantly

00:08:52.490 --> 00:08:54.080 align:middle line:90%
and translating.

00:08:54.080 --> 00:08:57.120 align:middle line:84%
O'Hara was actually quite
fluent in French as well.

00:08:57.120 --> 00:08:59.003 align:middle line:84%
So they're very
influenced by surrealism.

00:08:59.003 --> 00:09:01.670 align:middle line:84%
A lot of the work that I'm going
to present tonight from the New

00:09:01.670 --> 00:09:04.610 align:middle line:84%
York School Poets is not
the more surreal stuff

00:09:04.610 --> 00:09:06.620 align:middle line:84%
that they did, but
they did do a lot of--

00:09:06.620 --> 00:09:08.420 align:middle line:90%
Koch, in particular.

00:09:08.420 --> 00:09:11.660 align:middle line:84%
And O'Hara and
Ashbery all did stuff

00:09:11.660 --> 00:09:16.400 align:middle line:84%
that was really quite
influenced by the surrealists.

00:09:16.400 --> 00:09:20.000 align:middle line:84%
So anyway, what are
the other values?

00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:25.040 align:middle line:84%
Sociability and amusement,
pleasure, saying yes.

00:09:25.040 --> 00:09:26.180 align:middle line:90%
The great yes.

00:09:26.180 --> 00:09:32.690 align:middle line:84%
I once met somebody who had
Koch as a teacher at Columbia

00:09:32.690 --> 00:09:34.790 align:middle line:84%
as an undergraduate
and she had brought him

00:09:34.790 --> 00:09:37.340 align:middle line:84%
a bunch of poems
in one day and she

00:09:37.340 --> 00:09:41.870 align:middle line:84%
said they were pretty
typical undergraduate stormy

00:09:41.870 --> 00:09:46.610 align:middle line:90%
relationship, dark times poems.

00:09:46.610 --> 00:09:49.490 align:middle line:84%
And Koch read a few of
them and he looked at her

00:09:49.490 --> 00:09:54.460 align:middle line:84%
and he just smiled and he
said, don't you ever say yes?

00:09:54.460 --> 00:09:59.440 align:middle line:84%
And in some way, that was one
of the projects of the New York

00:09:59.440 --> 00:10:03.760 align:middle line:84%
School Poets, to not
see life as a tragedy

00:10:03.760 --> 00:10:07.660 align:middle line:84%
but to see what was
in it in a daily basis

00:10:07.660 --> 00:10:11.710 align:middle line:84%
as a kind of ongoing pleasure
that should be recognized.

00:10:11.710 --> 00:10:15.370 align:middle line:84%
It deserved-- that material
deserve to be in poetry.

00:10:15.370 --> 00:10:17.980 align:middle line:84%
And in a way, what
they're doing is enlarging

00:10:17.980 --> 00:10:20.290 align:middle line:90%
the sphere of subject matter.

00:10:20.290 --> 00:10:22.040 align:middle line:84%
That's one way to
think about it.

00:10:22.040 --> 00:10:25.000 align:middle line:84%
So the aesthetic really
emphasizes spontaneity,

00:10:25.000 --> 00:10:28.840 align:middle line:84%
immediacy,
improvisation, surprise

00:10:28.840 --> 00:10:33.160 align:middle line:84%
is a huge value for the
New York School Poets.

00:10:33.160 --> 00:10:35.800 align:middle line:84%
They want to
surprise themselves.

00:10:35.800 --> 00:10:37.720 align:middle line:84%
What they're doing is
an amplified version

00:10:37.720 --> 00:10:39.400 align:middle line:90%
of what Frost talks about.

00:10:39.400 --> 00:10:42.040 align:middle line:84%
Frost says, no surprise
for the writer,

00:10:42.040 --> 00:10:43.820 align:middle line:90%
no surprise for the reader.

00:10:43.820 --> 00:10:46.750 align:middle line:84%
So your job is to make
those surprises occur

00:10:46.750 --> 00:10:48.310 align:middle line:90%
in the act of writing a poem.

00:10:48.310 --> 00:10:53.110 align:middle line:84%
The New York School Poets
really amplified that.

00:10:53.110 --> 00:10:56.350 align:middle line:84%
And they're very
interested in the immediacy

00:10:56.350 --> 00:11:03.250 align:middle line:84%
of the poem, the immediacy of
the moment in which the poem is

00:11:03.250 --> 00:11:04.930 align:middle line:90%
being written.

00:11:04.930 --> 00:11:08.740 align:middle line:84%
OK, that's where
you locate yourself.

00:11:08.740 --> 00:11:11.410 align:middle line:84%
The poem does not
refer to something

00:11:11.410 --> 00:11:13.150 align:middle line:90%
that happens outside of it.

00:11:13.150 --> 00:11:16.300 align:middle line:84%
It's all happening in
this moment of the poem.

00:11:16.300 --> 00:11:19.270 align:middle line:84%
And that's an idea that's
shared very commonly

00:11:19.270 --> 00:11:24.460 align:middle line:84%
by that constellation of poets
in Don Allen's anthology.

00:11:24.460 --> 00:11:31.230 align:middle line:84%
The New York School Poets
and the Beats and the Black

00:11:31.230 --> 00:11:32.250 align:middle line:90%
Mountain poets.

00:11:32.250 --> 00:11:34.800 align:middle line:84%
So it tends to be
very fast, it tends

00:11:34.800 --> 00:11:36.720 align:middle line:84%
to move in unexpected
directions,

00:11:36.720 --> 00:11:38.850 align:middle line:90%
it often is fragmented.

00:11:38.850 --> 00:11:41.580 align:middle line:84%
Some of what they were
doing depended on effects

00:11:41.580 --> 00:11:44.940 align:middle line:84%
that they had picked
up from Apollinaire

00:11:44.940 --> 00:11:48.000 align:middle line:84%
and then the surrealists which
involved collage techniques.

00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:50.870 align:middle line:90%


00:11:50.870 --> 00:11:54.800 align:middle line:84%
O'Hara has another
great line in a poem.

00:11:54.800 --> 00:11:58.550 align:middle line:84%
He says, "my strength
is in my mobility."

00:11:58.550 --> 00:12:00.170 align:middle line:90%
"My strength is in my mobility."

00:12:00.170 --> 00:12:04.580 align:middle line:84%
And in some sense, the
movement of the poems

00:12:04.580 --> 00:12:07.460 align:middle line:84%
is what's really
important in them.

00:12:07.460 --> 00:12:09.800 align:middle line:84%
Ordinary life tends
to be its subject.

00:12:09.800 --> 00:12:14.150 align:middle line:84%
So O'Hara has a series of
poems called Lunch Poems.

00:12:14.150 --> 00:12:18.410 align:middle line:84%
As you will hear when he
reads this first poem,

00:12:18.410 --> 00:12:20.840 align:middle line:84%
he's talking about the
act of writing them.

00:12:20.840 --> 00:12:22.190 align:middle line:90%
So it's this sense-- he said.

00:12:22.190 --> 00:12:25.100 align:middle line:84%
I, do these poems, they're
called-- they're, "I do this,

00:12:25.100 --> 00:12:27.110 align:middle line:90%
I do that," poems.

00:12:27.110 --> 00:12:28.010 align:middle line:90%
That's all they are.

00:12:28.010 --> 00:12:29.960 align:middle line:90%
There's no plot to them.

00:12:29.960 --> 00:12:31.940 align:middle line:84%
There's no problem that
needs to be solved.

00:12:31.940 --> 00:12:36.146 align:middle line:90%


00:12:36.146 --> 00:12:39.380 align:middle line:84%
They don't have to make an
important statement about life,

00:12:39.380 --> 00:12:42.890 align:middle line:84%
they just have to be in
life and get as much of that

00:12:42.890 --> 00:12:45.470 align:middle line:84%
as they can, to be
as alive as they can.

00:12:45.470 --> 00:12:46.970 align:middle line:84%
And in a way what
they're doing is

00:12:46.970 --> 00:12:51.440 align:middle line:84%
they're puncturing the
very serious surface

00:12:51.440 --> 00:12:52.920 align:middle line:90%
of high modernism.

00:12:52.920 --> 00:12:57.170 align:middle line:84%
So this is where postmodernism
begins in a lot of ways

00:12:57.170 --> 00:12:58.640 align:middle line:90%
for good and bad.

00:12:58.640 --> 00:13:01.250 align:middle line:90%


00:13:01.250 --> 00:13:03.590 align:middle line:90%
Yeah.

00:13:03.590 --> 00:13:05.330 align:middle line:84%
There's something
really deceptively

00:13:05.330 --> 00:13:08.060 align:middle line:84%
subversive about all this though
because I think what they're

00:13:08.060 --> 00:13:11.790 align:middle line:90%
really about is a sense that--

00:13:11.790 --> 00:13:15.080 align:middle line:84%
well, one thing they're doing
is redefining the beautiful

00:13:15.080 --> 00:13:17.270 align:middle line:90%
in poetry, the sublime.

00:13:17.270 --> 00:13:19.970 align:middle line:84%
And they are bringing
all of this stuff

00:13:19.970 --> 00:13:24.480 align:middle line:84%
into poetry to be considered
as beautiful, to be valued.

00:13:24.480 --> 00:13:26.450 align:middle line:84%
So they're rescuing
something in that sense.

00:13:26.450 --> 00:13:28.430 align:middle line:90%
They're rescuing pieces of life.

00:13:28.430 --> 00:13:32.450 align:middle line:84%
And as I said before, what
appears to be nothing special

00:13:32.450 --> 00:13:35.690 align:middle line:84%
is special because
basically it's 99% of life.

00:13:35.690 --> 00:13:38.150 align:middle line:84%
And it's vanishing,
it's ephemeral,

00:13:38.150 --> 00:13:39.500 align:middle line:90%
it's just disappearing.

00:13:39.500 --> 00:13:43.340 align:middle line:84%
So something mildly
Buddhist about all of this.

00:13:43.340 --> 00:13:46.280 align:middle line:84%
I have a friend, Linda
Bamber, who teaches at Tufts.

00:13:46.280 --> 00:13:48.775 align:middle line:84%
And she teaches a course on
Buddhism in American poetry

00:13:48.775 --> 00:13:50.900 align:middle line:84%
and she talks a lot about
the New York School Poets

00:13:50.900 --> 00:13:58.490 align:middle line:84%
as people who are very much
in a sort of tradition whose

00:13:58.490 --> 00:14:02.660 align:middle line:84%
ideas can be traced back
in some sense to Buddhism.

00:14:02.660 --> 00:14:04.910 align:middle line:84%
Even though probably
they were never

00:14:04.910 --> 00:14:08.210 align:middle line:84%
directly-- this stuff was in
the air, I have to say that.

00:14:08.210 --> 00:14:12.140 align:middle line:84%
Cage, all the painters
were listening to stuff.

00:14:12.140 --> 00:14:18.800 align:middle line:84%
This is the time of Alan Watts
introducing zen and DT Suzuki

00:14:18.800 --> 00:14:22.400 align:middle line:90%
introducing zen in America.

00:14:22.400 --> 00:14:27.560 align:middle line:84%
So having said all that, I
want to just look at the poems

00:14:27.560 --> 00:14:31.680 align:middle line:84%
and see how those poems
embody some of those values.

00:14:31.680 --> 00:14:34.610 align:middle line:84%
So I'm going to play
a recording of O'Hara

00:14:34.610 --> 00:14:43.820 align:middle line:84%
reading "Adieu to Norman, Bon
Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul."

00:14:43.820 --> 00:14:51.020 align:middle line:84%
So the next poem is one
of a series of poems

00:14:51.020 --> 00:14:54.680 align:middle line:84%
that I wrote at work
on my lunch hour,

00:14:54.680 --> 00:14:57.710 align:middle line:84%
which City Life is
going to publish

00:14:57.710 --> 00:15:00.110 align:middle line:84%
next year under the
title Lunch Poems

00:15:00.110 --> 00:15:02.780 align:middle line:84%
because Ferlinghetti thought
it was so amusing that anyone

00:15:02.780 --> 00:15:05.030 align:middle line:84%
was sitting around typing
during their lunch hour.

00:15:05.030 --> 00:15:07.250 align:middle line:84%
So he said, why don't
you put them together

00:15:07.250 --> 00:15:09.627 align:middle line:84%
and we'll publish
them as Lunch Poems.

00:15:09.627 --> 00:15:12.470 align:middle line:90%


00:15:12.470 --> 00:15:15.830 align:middle line:84%
This one is called "Adieu
to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan

00:15:15.830 --> 00:15:16.790 align:middle line:90%
and Jean-Paul."

00:15:16.790 --> 00:15:18.920 align:middle line:84%
It's for a friend of mine
who was going to France

00:15:18.920 --> 00:15:22.400 align:middle line:84%
and I had to hurry up and
do it because I was having

00:15:22.400 --> 00:15:23.780 align:middle line:90%
a farewell lunch with him.

00:15:23.780 --> 00:15:28.020 align:middle line:90%


00:15:28.020 --> 00:15:30.210 align:middle line:84%
It is 12:10 in New
York and I am wondering

00:15:30.210 --> 00:15:33.840 align:middle line:84%
if I will finish this in time
to meet Norman for lunch.

00:15:33.840 --> 00:15:34.800 align:middle line:90%
Ah, lunch!

00:15:34.800 --> 00:15:38.400 align:middle line:84%
I think I am going crazy,
what with my terrible hangover

00:15:38.400 --> 00:15:41.370 align:middle line:84%
and the weekend coming up
at excitement-prone Kenneth

00:15:41.370 --> 00:15:42.420 align:middle line:90%
Koch's.

00:15:42.420 --> 00:15:45.270 align:middle line:84%
I wish I were staying in
town and working on my poem

00:15:45.270 --> 00:15:48.360 align:middle line:84%
at Joan's studio for a new
book by Grove Press which

00:15:48.360 --> 00:15:50.430 align:middle line:90%
they will probably not print.

00:15:50.430 --> 00:15:53.160 align:middle line:84%
But it is good to be several
floors up in the dead of night,

00:15:53.160 --> 00:15:55.300 align:middle line:84%
wondering whether you
are any good or not

00:15:55.300 --> 00:15:59.190 align:middle line:84%
and the only decision you
can make is that you did it.

00:15:59.190 --> 00:16:02.370 align:middle line:84%
Yesterday, I looked up the rue
Frémicourt on a map and was

00:16:02.370 --> 00:16:05.940 align:middle line:84%
happy to find it, like a
bird flying over Paris et ses

00:16:05.940 --> 00:16:10.050 align:middle line:84%
environs which unfortunately
did not include Seine-et-Oise,

00:16:10.050 --> 00:16:13.960 align:middle line:84%
which I don't know as well
as a number of other things.

00:16:13.960 --> 00:16:16.320 align:middle line:84%
And Allen is back
talking about god a lot

00:16:16.320 --> 00:16:19.890 align:middle line:84%
and Peter is back not talking
very much and Joe has a cold

00:16:19.890 --> 00:16:21.870 align:middle line:84%
and is not coming to
Kenneth's, although he

00:16:21.870 --> 00:16:23.400 align:middle line:90%
is coming to lunch with Norman.

00:16:23.400 --> 00:16:25.500 align:middle line:84%
I suspect he's
making a distinction.

00:16:25.500 --> 00:16:27.360 align:middle line:90%
Well, who isn't?

00:16:27.360 --> 00:16:29.460 align:middle line:84%
I wish I were reeling
around Paris instead

00:16:29.460 --> 00:16:30.990 align:middle line:90%
of reeling around New York.

00:16:30.990 --> 00:16:33.120 align:middle line:90%
I wish I weren't reeling at all.

00:16:33.120 --> 00:16:36.600 align:middle line:84%
It is Spring, the ice is melted,
the Ricard is being poured.

00:16:36.600 --> 00:16:39.060 align:middle line:84%
We are all happy and
young and toothless.

00:16:39.060 --> 00:16:40.980 align:middle line:90%
It is the same as old age.

00:16:40.980 --> 00:16:43.350 align:middle line:84%
The only thing to do
is simply continue.

00:16:43.350 --> 00:16:44.400 align:middle line:90%
Is that simple?

00:16:44.400 --> 00:16:47.560 align:middle line:84%
Yes, it is simple because
it is the only thing to do.

00:16:47.560 --> 00:16:48.480 align:middle line:90%
Can you do it?

00:16:48.480 --> 00:16:51.960 align:middle line:84%
Yes, you can, because it
is the only thing to do.

00:16:51.960 --> 00:16:54.540 align:middle line:84%
Blue light over the Bois
de Boulogne, it continues.

00:16:54.540 --> 00:16:55.950 align:middle line:90%
The Seine continues.

00:16:55.950 --> 00:16:57.660 align:middle line:84%
The Louvre stays
open, it continues.

00:16:57.660 --> 00:16:59.520 align:middle line:90%
It hardly closes at all.

00:16:59.520 --> 00:17:02.220 align:middle line:84%
The Bar Américain
continues to be French.

00:17:02.220 --> 00:17:04.050 align:middle line:84%
de Gaulle continues
to be Algerian,

00:17:04.050 --> 00:17:07.020 align:middle line:84%
as does Camus Shirley
Goldfarb continues

00:17:07.020 --> 00:17:10.050 align:middle line:84%
to be Shirley Goldfarb
and Jane Hazan continues

00:17:10.050 --> 00:17:12.300 align:middle line:90%
to be Jane Freilicher, I think!

00:17:12.300 --> 00:17:14.130 align:middle line:84%
And Irving Sandler
continues to be

00:17:14.130 --> 00:17:17.849 align:middle line:84%
the balayeur des artistes and
so do I. Sometimes I think

00:17:17.849 --> 00:17:19.829 align:middle line:90%
I'm in love with painting.

00:17:19.829 --> 00:17:23.369 align:middle line:84%
And surely the Piscene Deligny
continues to have water in it.

00:17:23.369 --> 00:17:26.130 align:middle line:84%
And the floor continues to
have tables and newspapers

00:17:26.130 --> 00:17:27.390 align:middle line:90%
and people under them.

00:17:27.390 --> 00:17:30.300 align:middle line:84%
And surely we shall not
continue to be unhappy.

00:17:30.300 --> 00:17:33.360 align:middle line:84%
We shall be happy but we shall
continue to be ourselves.

00:17:33.360 --> 00:17:35.520 align:middle line:84%
Everything continues
to be possible.

00:17:35.520 --> 00:17:38.040 align:middle line:84%
René Char, Pierre
Reverdy, Samuel Beckett.

00:17:38.040 --> 00:17:39.780 align:middle line:90%
It is possible, isn't it?

00:17:39.780 --> 00:17:42.720 align:middle line:84%
I love Reverdy for saying yes,
though I don't believe it.

00:17:42.720 --> 00:17:45.260 align:middle line:90%


00:17:45.260 --> 00:17:48.190 align:middle line:84%
So there's a huge
number of things

00:17:48.190 --> 00:17:52.880 align:middle line:84%
to say about this "I do
this, I do that" poem

00:17:52.880 --> 00:17:55.510 align:middle line:84%
but the way it
begins certainly is

00:17:55.510 --> 00:17:59.560 align:middle line:84%
a kind of classic and
much imitated strategy.

00:17:59.560 --> 00:18:02.320 align:middle line:84%
"It is 12:10 in
New York and I am

00:18:02.320 --> 00:18:04.207 align:middle line:84%
wondering if I will
finish this in time

00:18:04.207 --> 00:18:05.290 align:middle line:90%
to meet Norman for lunch."

00:18:05.290 --> 00:18:08.140 align:middle line:84%
So there's this sense
that what you're getting

00:18:08.140 --> 00:18:11.860 align:middle line:84%
is almost the raw
data of the experience

00:18:11.860 --> 00:18:13.840 align:middle line:84%
of the poet in that
particular moment

00:18:13.840 --> 00:18:16.330 align:middle line:90%
and the notation of time.

00:18:16.330 --> 00:18:18.280 align:middle line:84%
There's quite a
number of O'Hara poems

00:18:18.280 --> 00:18:20.100 align:middle line:84%
that begin with a
notation of time.

00:18:20.100 --> 00:18:22.480 align:middle line:84%
Many of these Lunch
Poems, actually.

00:18:22.480 --> 00:18:25.750 align:middle line:84%
And you see it as
a strategy that

00:18:25.750 --> 00:18:28.330 align:middle line:84%
starts popping up in second
generation New York School

00:18:28.330 --> 00:18:30.970 align:middle line:90%
Poets like Ted Berrigan.

00:18:30.970 --> 00:18:35.440 align:middle line:84%
It immediately becomes an
identifying mark for the New

00:18:35.440 --> 00:18:38.980 align:middle line:90%
York School as a strategy.

00:18:38.980 --> 00:18:42.670 align:middle line:84%
And you get in the
first couple of stanzas

00:18:42.670 --> 00:18:46.750 align:middle line:84%
alone a sense of a
mind jumping around.

00:18:46.750 --> 00:18:49.180 align:middle line:84%
Not a mind organizing
itself in a sort

00:18:49.180 --> 00:18:52.420 align:middle line:90%
of essayistic rational way.

00:18:52.420 --> 00:18:56.200 align:middle line:84%
Not organizing it in
using for instance,

00:18:56.200 --> 00:18:59.530 align:middle line:84%
the argumentative
structure of a sonnet.

00:18:59.530 --> 00:19:05.470 align:middle line:84%
Not at all attempting to give
it a form that it doesn't

00:19:05.470 --> 00:19:07.670 align:middle line:90%
possess in and of itself.

00:19:07.670 --> 00:19:10.690 align:middle line:84%
So the idea of organic
form is something

00:19:10.690 --> 00:19:14.140 align:middle line:84%
that's in the air at this
point for a lot of people

00:19:14.140 --> 00:19:16.673 align:middle line:90%
in all the arts.

00:19:16.673 --> 00:19:17.173 align:middle line:90%