Welcome to week 7 of ModPo on the New York School. Please note that there is no audio introduction for this week. So this video and the text head note that we provided the top of the syllabus will have to do for your introduction. The New York School, in the first part of the week's syllabus, we encounter poems by members of the so-called first generation of New York School or the originals, some of them, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery Barber Guest, James Schuyler and Kenneth Coke. In the second part, next, that is to say we meet a second generation New York School poet, Bernadette Mayer, who is not just a favorite poet of ours at ModPo, but a favorite person. We've gotten to know Bernadette, an you will see her appear variously in ModPo minute and a ModPo plus. And then another member of the so-called second generation of New York School, or maybe second in the half in terms of age and chronology, and that is Eileen Myles. Now, Eileen Myles is represented here by a poem titled Mount Saint Helens. It's a wonderful poem, a devastating poem, and it's noteworthy for two reasons. Other than that it fits perfectly in this discussion of with the New York School poetry is all about. It picks up on two sub-themes or issues that ModPo returns to again and again. And one of those is the idea of an experimental elegy. The idea that experimental poet is not going to be satisfied with traditional methods of using language to convey loss. The way to respond in language commensurate with the depth and complexity of that loss is to write in a nontraditional way, in a non normative way. Death, they would argue needs to be met by a disruptive language, because death is itself disruptive. And the 2nd way in which that poem responds to a sub-theme, kind of a major sub-theme of the course is that it is a meta poem. It is about a poet who has died and it turns into a poem about what the surviving poet, Eileen Myles, does with their writing as a result of this loss. Finally in the syllabus, two contemporary poets respond more or less directly to Frank O'hara's The Day Lady Died, which is the famous and wonderful elegy, another experimental elegy that starts the week. And these two poems also respond to the famous I do this, I do that style of the New York School, that kind of breathless, present tense, non-narrative or anti-narrative style. These are Patrick Rosales up down ode that ends in an ode to the machete, and then Hanif Abdurraqib's poem USA versus Cuba. And in the latter of these two poems, what's interesting is to try to figure out Abdurraqib's position with respect to the New York School style, or even to O'Haras, the privilege of O'hara's lunch poem wanderings in the city. The style of USA versus Cuba that I do this, I do that breathlessness takes us thematically to new places, and explores antiblackness and the development of the poet. So it's sort of a memory portrait of the young black artists as he develops. And really interesting, the way he engages the New York School style in order to make that move. Just some highlights from the week. You'll want to watch for Kenneth Cokes' hilarious satiric rejoinder to William Carlos Williams famous Didi, This is just to say, which of course appears in our course in Week three. Barbara Guests poem 20, the number 20. This is a hard poem, don't give up on it. What you're going to see in the video recording of our improvised collaborative close reading is the joy, the sheer joy of the group collaboratively encountering a coherence in the poem. It took us together to do it, we didn't rehearse, we didn't practice, we didn't compare notes. In fact, we never ever did that in any of the recordings, filmed recordings we've made. We've never done two takes, and we've never done any editing. In some cases, you'll see that when we've abridged the longer videos, someone else has done editing later, but in order to make a 40 minute video into a 20 minute video. But Guest's 20, when we encounter it, you will watch us discover collaboratively how magnificent the poem is, a poem that we couldn't figure out. Any of us, including I the convener leader, when we went into it. That a sheer delight, not just the poem 20, which is a difficult poem, but the way in which we encounter it as a group. And then of course Jamie Schuyler's February, which is an absolutely gorgeous poem. Now, Schuyler is a poet of disability. And Schuyler, he does the New York School thing, except he's not out and around like O'Hara is on his lunch break. He's sitting in his apartment window looking out on New York. And there is a subtle but powerful difference between those stances, those positions, that subject position. Another highlight, Ashbery, Some Trees. This is our closest close reading of the entire course. We go word by word and phrase by phrase, assigning each to various members of the group. In a way, I think what we're doing here is we're modeling what close reading together can produce. This is a two part video, Some Trees on this one short early poem by Ashbery. It is really lovely poem about love and about relation, not just relationships but relation, the whole idea of relation. And Abdurraqib, again highlight the brilliantly complicated relationship that this black poet has with the O'Hara mode, and with the I do this I do that mode. It is really worth waiting for at the end of the week. I want to comment on a couple of concepts that we either encounter directly or are implicit through the week, anti-narrative and non-narrative. So clearly, one of the ways in which most of the poets of ModPo react against poetic tradition is to defy or resist conventional narrative, the A to Zness of getting from one place to the end of moving inexorably forward from a beginning through a middle to an end. We saw the resistance to this, let's say, in Gertrude Stein. Here in the New York School, the I do this I do that form allows the poet to create a kind of non sequitur, a series of paratactic, non connected things, lines, ideas, scenes, and one thing doesn't lead to another. The Day Lady Died is a perfect example. And there are two forms of this resistance to narrative. One is anti narrative. Now, anti narrative is a narrative poem that ironizes, satirizes or even mocks the tendency to narrate. And the classic example in this week is John Ashbery's, The Instruction Manual, and the whole idea of instruction or of having a manual to tell you what to do or how to put things together. It is a narrative poem relentlessly narrative, and some people read it as a straightforward narrative of an imagined it turns out trip to Guadalajara. But Ashbery is doing much more with that, he is creating a narrative against the idea of narrative, we'll call that anti narrative. Most of the New York School poets, an most of the poems that we encounter for the rest of this course are non narrative. That is to say more or less, they're not interested in telling a story. Some Trees is a perfect example of that. So, anti narrative and non narrative. Not that important to try to decide which New York School poem is non narrative, is distinct from anti narrative, but it's important to note in each case some kind of resistance to narrative. And finally, let me just put a plug in for ModPo plus. As with the beat week, week six. In week seven in ModPo plus, we have exploded. There's so many other New York School Poets, New York School related poets, New York School influence poets and their poems that help us represent what this innovative group was doing. And I want to conclude by mentioning and then actually reading the I already of. A poem by John Ashbery which has become anthemic to ModPo. You think if it was super anthemic, it would be in the main syllabus, but it's not. There's plenty of Ashbery representative in the main syllabus. The poem is called Just Walking Around, and we discovered it kind of after ModPo got started. I mean it was always there, but we we discovered how important it was to us later. And it is there, and there are six or seven entries in ModPo Plus, all about this poem. But I want to read it to you but I'm not nearly as good at reading it as Ashbery is, I mean, Ashbery was not famously not a great reader of his own poetry. He performed in a kind of intentional monotone. But when he read this poem, I think in the video, you have a video of him reading the poem at the Kelly Writers House, where I and others hosted his visit. He made three or four visits to the Writers House, and this was read by request at the last of those visits. It's a poem about digression. I won't comment. This intro's long enough already. I won't comment on it. But I will read it and maybe say a brief word or two if I feel like it's relevant. Just Walking Around, what name do I have for you? Certainly, there is no name for you in the sense that the stars have names, that somehow fit them just walking around an object of curiosity to some. But you are too preoccupied by the secret smudge in the back of your soul to say much. And wander around smiling to yourself and others. It gets to be kind of lonely, but at the same time off putting, counterproductive, as you realize once again that the longest way is the most efficient way. The one that looped among islands. And you always seem to be traveling in a circle. And now that the end is near, the segments of the trip swing open like an orange. There is light in there and mystery and food. Come see it. Come not for me, but it. But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other. I guess I have to comment. It's a self elegy in a way. It's about an old poet thinking about the end. It's also a poem that reaffirms of really important idea in Ashbery, in the New York School in experimental poetry. And for that matter in ModPo, which is that the longest way round is the most efficient way that digression is the heart of the matter. That getting to something directly contra the images, pardon me. Getting to something directly is going to be a misrepresentation. That counter productivity, which seems to be counter productivity to the world is actually quite productive. And that to be a poet who lives in that way, who does the New York school thing of wandering around. Think about O'Hara on a lunch break or Abdura keep in the back of that car. Yeah, just walking around is the business. Just walking around is life. You may not be heading to work, to an office. You may not be going directly to anything. You may just be walking around. It's off-putting to some people. It makes them think that you're kind of off your rocker. But that is where things really get encountered. That trip that you didn't plan very well and took you are a roll around the islands. Well, there's light in there and mystery and food, in that non-directness. And in the end, Ashbery comes invites you to come see it that wandering, digressing, wandering. But also, if you look hard, you'll find him. He wrote the poem, obviously while alive. But now he's not, and we can find him just walking around every time we read the poem. Welcome to week seven and to the New York school.
