The New York School of Poetry
Course Description
Summary
This course will serve as an immersion in the work of several major American poets of the 1950s and 1960s, noted for their humor, irreverence, disjunctive experimentation, charm, and wildness, and collectively known as the New York School. We will begin by focusing on the original generation of New York School poets: John Ashbery, Frank OHara, Kenneth Koch, James Schuyler, and Barbara Guest. We will also study the Abstract Expressionist painters who were these poets' contemporaries and close friends, discuss connections between New York School poets and the French surrealists of the early 20th century, and examine the New York School against the cultural, political, and social landscape of 1960s New York. We will then trace the influence of the New York School on subsequent generations of writers, reading the work of Ted Berrigan, Dorothea Lasky, Bernadette Mayer, Eileen Myles, Alice Notley, Morgan Parker, John Yau, and Dean Young. Students are responsible for occasional creative imitations, a brief midterm exam, and two longer critical projects.
Learning Outcomes
- Through this course, students will
a) develop a familiarity with the aesthetic of the New York School of poets and of the 1st and
2nd generations of the New York School of painters
b) learn to consider the effects of diction, syntax, image, non-sequitur, tangent, and rhetorical
accumulation as they perform close readings of individual poems
c) form an understanding of the historical, political, and societal context in which the New York
School poets and painters flourished
d) strengthen their critical writing skills and the effectiveness of their verbal participation in
discussions
e) hone creative writing skills through attempting mimetics of a number of New York School
poets
Corequisites
Student enrolled in this course are expected to attend all Poetry at Bennington events and Literature Evenings, held most Wednesdays at 7pm