Barbara Guest

Barbara Guest was born in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1920. She attended the University of California in Los Angeles and Berkeley before moving to New York City in the 1950s, where she soon became part of the city’s vibrant art scene. Like many other New York School poets, she combined her poetic work with art criticism, serving as associate editor of ARTnews from 1951 to 1954.

While her work of the 1950s and 60s can be described as a tension-filled balance between “a lyric, or purely musical, impulse […] and a graphic or painterly impulse.” (Tyrus Miller in Contemporary Poets), her later work moved its attention more to language itself. As Paul Hoover puts it in the anthology: “Guest is not a poet of social statement; neither is she confessional: her work focuses instead on the possibilities of language.”

In addition to her poetic work, Guest also published a highly regarded biography of the Imagist poet H.D., Herself Defined: The Poet H.D. and Her World (1986) as well as an experimental novel, Seeking Air (1978).

Guest’s honours include the Robert Frost Medal for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Society of America, the Longwood Award, a San Francisco State award for poetry, the Lawrence Lipton Award for Literature, the Columbia Book Award, and a grant from The National Endowment for the Arts.

She died in 2006.


Links:
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/guest/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/barbara-guest
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/barbara-guest
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Guest.php

My below poem is inspired by Guest’s magnificent “Red Lilies”.


~ - ~

traces

the finger smudges on the tablet don’t really say anything
what’s behind the now black screen
my words, the Lacanian Other, the snaps from our last holiday
(where did we even go?)

deeper imprints are found elsewhere

the thinned out patch of carpet under your desk
where you spend your blue light mornings

the groves of my spine
scratches, the broken skin

the dark lines of dirty water running down our living room wall
(someone needs to fix the roof)

the little pink post-it note left in your copy
of Simulacra and Simulation
lying on the floor in my room, saying

“phantasms and the imaginary as waste of a hyperreal life”

my thoughts scattered like petals of a withering lily
I keep the browser open in the back

fingers flickering

only theory is flawless
each practice run leaves its trace

Ted Berrigan

Ted Berrigan – do I have to write much of an introduction?

One of the key figures of the second generation of New York School poets; charismatic leader of the bohemian literary scene of the Lower East Side in the 1970s; a master of intricate, subtle modulations in emotion and cadence; unique and passionate poet who’s poetry projected a “sensibility that is confiding, sad, graceful, affectionate, and indistinguishable from the sensibility he projected in person” (Poetry Foundation).

In his short career – brought to an early end by his death in 1983 – he published more than 20 books of poetry. If he had had his will, his grave stone at the military cemetery Calverton National on Long Island would read: “Nice To See You.” But cemetery regulations wouldn’t allow it. Instead a volume of essays, poems and reminiscences by his many friends and fellow poets now bears this name (Nice to See You: Homage to Ted Berrigan, edited by Anne Waldman, Coffee House Press, 1991).

Links:
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/berrigan/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ted-berrigan
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/ted-berrigan
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Berrigan.php


My silly, little poem below merely borrowed from Berrigan in the use of a sonnet-like form. Better to steer free from any temptation to sound like him…

~ - ~

Sonnet

Shut down your local motor garage
It sends the wrong signals
You don’t want to encourage
Drivers by fixing their cars

Let the wrecks of abandoned vehicles
Block the entrance of every road and highway
Let the fools break their toes
Kicking their malfunctioning cars

I don’t just say it out of spite
Proudly waving my bus pass
Or seeking revenge of each time they sped
Through a puddle on the side of the road

It’s just that the evidence now so is overwhelming:
At this rate we are heading for a 5-degree-rise.

Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge

Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge was born in Beijing in 1947, the daughter of a Chinese mother and an American father who was the son of Dutch immigrants. Her family moved to the United States when she was a year old and she grew up in Massachusetts, earning a BA from Reed College in 1969. She moved to New York City in the early 1970s and received an MFA from Columbia University in 1973.

Berssenbrugge became deeply engaged and influenced by the movements of abstract visual arts, the New York School, and the Language poets, developing a poetic practice which seems to draw on all of these different aspects simultaneously. As the Academy of American Poets says of Berssenbrugge’s work:

“Characteristic of her style is a lush mix of abstract language, collaged images, cultural and political investigation, and unexpected shifts between the meditative and the particular.”

Berssenbrugge has published more than a dozen collections of poetry. She has received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two American Book Awards, and honours from the Western States Art Foundation and the Asian American Writers Workshop.

She lives in New York City and northern New Mexico, where she has taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.

Links:
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/berssenbrugge/
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/mei-mei-berssenbrugge
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/mei-mei-berssenbrugge
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Berssenbrugge.php


My below poems was inspired by the last line from Berssenbrugge’s “Alakanak Break-Up” which is included in the anthology.


~ - ~

the initial colour of the tundra

it is the initial colour of the tundra
low alpha diversity
beyond the tree-line
where i am patchy
with very poor resiliency
against the rising reach

my black expanse
unshifting in months
of total darkness
where dead vegetation
and peat accumulates
frigid air

it is the initial colour of the tundra
frozen in your russian red
book i know i
should never have come here
bare and dirty ankle
-deep in boggy ground

my high latitudes
cowing among the moss and grasses
gently holding lichen against the dampened skin
i am vagile vertebrate
gyrfalcon, bewick's swan
the lesser white-fronted bird

it is the initial colour of the tundra
low beta diversity
as the permafrost thaws
just enough to let it
tend to the acidic over-saturated
groves which still remain inside my lungs

Alice Notley

It is hard to put Alice Notley into a box. Throughout the four decades of her extraordinary career her style has continued to shift and turn. Active in the New York poetry scene in the 1960s and 70s and indeed married to Ted Berrigan for more than 10 years, she is often associated with the Second Generation of New York School poets. But her work can also be found to reveal darker, almost mystical tendencies at one point while displaying a light, disjunctive style bordering on language poetry at other times. Her later work has a particular focus on book-length projects and often features narrative and character-centred forms.

Notley is the author of over 25 books of poetry. Her many awards include the San Francisco Poetry Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Griffin International Poetry Prize, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. Notley currently lives in Paris.

Links:
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/notley/
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Notley.php
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/alice-notley
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/alice-notley


My below poem took its initial inspiration from Notley’s “Beginning with a stain”.

~ - ~

beginning with a borrowing

beginning
with a borrowing
a wording
a spacing
a lining
a sentencing

words are
for uses
on the plains:
mother’s yellow handbag
sister’s silver bracelets abandoned in the drawer of the old room
brother’s battered travel case (blue)
father’s dark and heavy coat

words are
for uses
on the rules:
i steht fuer ich
went steht fuer vergangenheit
away steht fuer fernweh
forever fuer romantik

words are
for uses
on her own:
beginning
with a borrowing
a wording
a spacing
a lining
a sentencing

Tom Clark

image: Moritz Nähr [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Born in 1941 in Chicago, Tom Clark attended John Carroll University and the University of Michigan before going to England on a Fulbright scholarship. In addition to earning an MA at Cambridge University he spent some time hitchhiking across the country together with Allen Ginsberg.

Over the years Clark has published more than 30 collections of poetry. He is particularly famous for his sport-related poetry but also frequently addressed the state of contemporary America. As a poet mainly associated with the off-handed, witty poetry style of the New York School, Clark also established himself as a leading opponent of the language movement.

The poet Billy Collins wrote of Clark’s work: “Tom Clark, the lyric imp of American poetry, has delivered many decades’ worth of goofy, melancholic, cosmic, playful, and wiggy poems. I can never get enough of this wise guy leaning on the literary jukebox, this charmer who refuses to part with his lovesick teenage heart.”

In addition to his work as a poet Clark also published a number of novels and biographies of people such as Ted Berrigan, Robert Creeley, Ed Dorn, Jack Kerouac, and Charles Olson.

The recipient of awards from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts, Clark has been an instructor in poetics at the New College of California since 1988. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Links:
http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.co.uk/ (Tom Clark’s blog with poetry and essays)
http://jacketmagazine.com/bio/clark-t.shtml (his author page at Jacket Magazine)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/tom-clark
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/tom-clark


My poem below took their inspiration from Clark’s “You” poem series. They also draw in parts on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous philosophical work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

~ - ~

You (XVI)
1.    Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
2.    Cups of tea on your sofa in the early morning sun.
3.    Your arms.
4.    And lips and perfect cock.
5.    Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
6.    With the curtains drawn.
7.    Long walks along the canal, through the park, towards a slice of cake and coffee.
8.    What is thinkable is also possible.
9.    Books piled up.
10.    Thoughts kissing, begetting others.
11.    It will mean the unspeakable by clearly displaying the speakable.
12.    Not without hesitation.
13.    Yet eventually.
14.    Operations can vanish.
15.    Logic must take care of itself.

Charles North

Born in Brooklyn, New York, poet and writer Charles North grew up in New York City and earned degrees from Tufts University and Columbia University before attending Kenneth Koch’s poetry workshop at The New School. The Poetry Project in New York City was central to North’s development as a poet.  He went to numerous readings, published in Project magazines, and befriended other poets of his generation, including two who would become close colleagues, Tony Towle and Paul Violi.

Since his first collection Lineups (1970), he has published nine books of poems, as well as collaborative books with Towle and with the artist Trevor Winkfield.

Publisher’s Weekly noted that

“North’s work constantly greets us with the deft presence of a mind devilishly enamored of improbable form and substantial ideation … there is a pervasive wistfulness and lyric rush that pervades even the most artificial of forms, as if blueprint ink was running from the draughtsman’s tears”

Hoover says of North’s work: It is “reminiscent of the metaphysical poetry of Andrew Marvell, [and] is often gently humorous, moving with ease from high to low levels of rhetoric.”

In addition to his work as a writer, North edited the poet/painter anthology Broadway with James Schuyler in 1979, and ran the Swollen Magpie Press with Paul Violi from 1976-1982. Among his awards are two NEA Creative Writing Fellowships and four Fund for Poetry awards.  In 2008 he was awarded an Individual Artist’s Grant by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

Links:
http://www.charlesnorth.net/Home.html
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-north
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/North.php


The below poem was inspired by North’s “A Note To Tony Towle (After WS)” which uses a similar structure.


~ - ~

Not to

One must have swallowed three decades of game show hosts
Not to feel empty on a Monday morning
One must have squealed each curl of pubic hair
Not to feel lonely on a Friday night
One must have scratched the stickers off the back of each IKEA fish stick,
have sucked the straw of six generations of iPhone battery leaks
One must have hugged every new soft minty sanitary towel
Not to feel
Not to feel

One must have held on to 6,000 air miles of pina coladas
Not to feel dizzy with frustration every day
One must have leaned on the heavy metal rods of eternal porn film wisdom
Not to feel the rising of the bile in your throat
One must have kissed the sweet lips of neo-liberal consensus
Have licked along the voluptuous curves of hedge fund gluttony
One must have touched the private parts of 20 years of everyone’s Google search history
Not to feel
Not to feel

Ann Lauterbach

Ann Lauterbach was born in New York City in 1942. She attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Columbia University before moving to London for a period of time to teach and work as an editor. She returned to the US in 1974 and - as the Poetry Foundation puts it – “immersed herself in the art world, working as an art consultant and an assistant director to various art galleries”. She has published nine poetry collections as well as one book of essays (The Night Sky: Writings on the Poetics of Experience (2005)).

John Ashbery to who’s work her poetry has often been compared, said about Lauterbach’s writings: “Ann Lauterbach’s poetry goes straight to the elastic, infinite core of time.”

She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. For over 15 years, she has taught at Bard College and co-directed the Writing Division of the MFA program. She lives in Germantown, New York.

Links:
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/lauterbach/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ann-lauterbach
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/ann-lauterbach
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Lauterbach.php

My below poem is inspired by Lauterbach’s “Platonic Subject” – while her poem reflects on Platonic Realism I decided to address the question whether we have free will.

~ - ~

Being Determined

Waiting for the bubbles to rise in the hot water as I make my cup of tea.
My decision just another bubble, following the pull of nature’s law.
My steaming cup - entailed by the precise state of the universe
at a given time t0 together with all the laws of nature:
sperm, ovum, a zygote cell growing, lizards slithering across wet, sandy soil,
bubbles rising, steam gathering heavy on the inside of the lid.
At a given time, as expected, I watch it. Being determined.
Caught in a bubble or free to drift, defy the tale -

John Godfrey

Born in Massena, New York, John Godfrey attended Princeton University. Often associated with the New York School, he has lived in the East Village of Manhattan since the 1960s.

Godfrey’s work was praised by Ron Padgett for its “lyrical and metaphysical” qualities as well as its “irresistible philosophical hauteur” and also Hoover mentions his particular use of “packed syntax and exuberant word choice” which creates a kind of surrealism.

Godfrey is the author of 14 collections of poetry. He has received fellowships from the General Electric Foundation (1984), the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2009), and the Z Foundation (2013). He retired in 2011 after 17 years as a nurse clinician in HIV/AIDS.

Links:
http://www.wavepoetry.com/products/john-godfrey
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Godfrey.php
https://vimeo.com/62674082 (video of a 2013 reading)

My below poem took its inspiration (and opening lines) from Godfrey's poem "Wings".

~ - ~

Paper
(after John Godfrey)

I know I come off a little bit wavy.
but you must realise the material world
is constantly crumpling before my eyes.
a pile of discarded drafts in a bin.
good luck trying to smooth out
those creases. they run across everything.
just like nothing escapes the inky
hands of the print-maker. all
bound up tightly, glued together
forever happily between the flimsy bent
cardboard covers of a cheap paperback:
romance and murder mystery,
always plenty of laughs and tragedy.
in one volume compiled. what an excellent
bargain! but turn the first page and you’ll see
everyone’s names are changed.
you e.g. are Grace and I am
Prudence, and every man you ever
met was called Jack.
which is just a metaphor or
maybe an innuendo that nobody
ever cares to look up. we read
while we write:
mixed source paper certificate --
     fibres from certified forests can be
     mixed with recycled material and
     products from sources beyond our
     control.

Harry Mathews

Harry Mathews grew up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and was educated at Princeton and Harvard University. He spent many years in Paris where he not only met John Ashbery but also became the only American member of the French avant-garde literary society Oulipo (Ouvroir de literature potentielle).

Mathews has also been associated with the New York School of poets. He started the literary magazine Locus Solus – named after the surrealist novel by Raymond Rousel – in 1960 together with John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler.

Mathews’ writing is often inspired by language games and formal constraints – a fact which also makes him a favourite with the language poets. As the Poetry Foundation notes:

“Mathews’s poetry and prose often use overarching formal constraints to examine the relationship between sound and meaning or pattern and lyric.”

In addition to his poetry he has published several novels. His honors include a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and an award for his fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Links:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/harry-mathews
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Mathews


My below poem was inspired by Mathews’ Selected Declarations of Dependence which uses modifications of common proverbs to build new poetic texts.

~ - ~

Politics

Like something the cat brought
Like something the cat caught
Like something the chat sort
Like something the chat bought
Like something the VAT brought
Like something the VAT ought
Like something the rat sought
Like something the rat court
Like something the brat snort
Like something the brat sport
Like something the tat court
Like something the bat sport
Like something the bat fought
Like something the bat sort
Like something the bat bought
Like something the bat thwart
Like something the cat ought
Like something the cat thought
Like something the cat brought

Kenward Elmslie

Kenward Elmslie was born in New York City in 1929. He grew up in Colorado Springs and Washington, DC and studied at Harvard University before moving back to New York City in the 1960s. He became a central figure in the New York School and promoted the work of fellow poets such as John Ashbery, Joe Brainard, Anne Waldman, and James Schuyler through his work as editor of Z Magazine.

Elmslie’s first writing experiences were as a lyricist and librettist, a fact which is still evident in his work which often explores the intersection of experimental poetry and musical theatre. In addition to his musical collaborations, he has also worked extensively with visual artists.

Elmslie’s honors include a grant from the Ford Foundation, the Project for Innovative Poetry’s Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Poetry, and an award from the National Council of the Arts.

I highly recommend going on his website (enable pop-ups!) and having a listen on Penn Sound – his stuff is simply amazing!

Links:
http://www.kenwardelmslie.com/ - this is officially my favourite website ever!
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/kenward-elmslie
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Elmslie.php

My little poem below is a silly response to Elmslie’s “Feathered Dancers” and is strongly influenced by a recent new (feline) addition to my family.

~ - ~

Feathered Dancer

On invisible string you tow me over Persian rugs and parquet
chuckling while he is chasing with razor claws.
“panem et circenses” he thinks of me as both, you think it’s okay
but I have holes now, a broken quill, crushed in his paws

I lost my feathers, my dreams, been pondering dying
I see Icarus’ fate drawing closer each day
still you drag me out again and again for the pleasure of the lion
I call it cruel, cynic, you call it play.

Paul Violi

Picture by Hidalgo944.

“A poetic reporter and a parodist, always on the alert for the telling encounter, the ripe bit of urban speech, the priceless instance of pop vulgarity” (New York Times) - Paul Violi was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1944 and attended Boston University. Following his return from Peace Corp service in Nigeria, he worked as managing editor of Architectural Forum. He also organised poetry readings at the Museum of Modern Art from 1974 to 1983 and co-founded Swollen Magpie Press. Violi is usually associated with the second generation of New York School poets, known for his poetry of wit and conceptual energy.

As David Lehman, editor of the Oxford Book of American Poetry, said of Violi’s work:

“I picked Violi because of the virtues I have admired all these years: his wit, his ability to find the poetic resonance of non-poetic language, his deadpan, and his ability to get serious ideas across without didactic earnestness. He is, in my view, among our most talented poets.”

Violi is the author of eleven books of poetry. His honours include the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award in Poetry, the Ingram Merrill Foundation Poetry Award, the American Academy of Arts & Letters Morton Dauwen Zabel Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

He died from cancer in 2011.

Links:
http://www.paulvioli.com/
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/violi/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/paul-violi
http://jacketmagazine.com/33/quattrone-violi.shtml (2007 article about Violi)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/books/paul-violi-poet-dies-at-66.html?_r=0 (New York Times Obituary)

My below poem took its inspiration from Violi’s “Index” – a poem mimicking the form of a book’s index. I chose the format of a record track listing for a short poem about the existentialist philosophy of Heidegger.

~ - ~

The Geworfenheit of the Individual into the World
Side A

1. A waltz in the world of the They
2. All consciousness is consciousness of you
3. It’s just another mood (let’s Dasein tonight)
4. Always old enough to die in Messkirch
5. The Turn

Side B

1. Things showing up in the light of our understanding of being
2. Destruktion Instruktion
3. The spirit of disponibilité
4. What to do about worldhood
5. The Thrown-ness Blues

Frank O'Hara

Frank O’Hara – do I even have to say anything?

The New York Poet. The avant-garde poet. The “urbane, ironic, sometimes genuinely celebratory and often wildly funny” poet (Mark Doty). The poet of immediacy, spontaneity, of everyday American vernacular, of popular culture. The poet of “Personism”. The personality-transcribed-into-text poet (Dan Chiasson) The read-again-and-again-and-again poet. The poet who died too soon.

Links:
http://www.frankohara.org/index.html
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/frank-ohara
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/frank-ohara
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/ohara/ohara.htm
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/07/fast-company New Yorker review of Mark Ford’s “Frank O’Hara: Selected Poems” by Dan Chiasson

My below poem takes its inspiration from O’Hara’s “Personal Poem”. It mixes my own version of an ordinary lunch hour in 2015 with the results from Google’s auto-complete which I got when I typed in the first words of each of O’Hara’s original lines.

~ - ~

personal poem auto-revisited, 2015

now when i get paid my checks be looking like phone numbers 
i have only two emotions careful fear and a tab in the background
an old romance stephen haller for the cosmopolitan feel
a and a bolt company looking at the weather
when i was in french in the N.Y. section kind of hoping I recognise a place
brought me to the fold of god or something from when Axel and I were visiting
help keep your account secure a week last year which feels ages ago now in Glasgow
but now i’m a  dog advert and updating here

i walk through the valley of the shadow of death I scroll through de-saturated reds and burned out
passing the baton of cappuccinos, sourdough bread, and holiday
and it’s like I lose myself in dreaming beaches on Instagram with the occasional selfie but not
the left the melody sample thankfully since that’s sort of embarrassing
do i ever get to be upset effy or at least like early 2014 as Ellen DeGeneres
i’d like to teach the world to sing that shot at the Oscars
and get together send a message to Sylwie who doesn’t take her lunch
leroi and cinzia hair salon until later hungover anyway
shaker the baker an article about Sylvia Plath having used basic as an insult
is .01 statistically significant before Kate Moss or something which I didn’t even know
and the bible tells me so and I try to bear it in mind
times last minute holidays for the next time
a lady awakened when I watch David Bowie’s hairstyle change on a gif
disease butterfly effect and again for thirty seconds
don’t like it i love it Miley Cyrus the other day
we go eat ihop just with different makeup and I wonder if she was
cool but easy things to draw or maybe just referencing someone
we decide who comes to this country before her which is possible because she really is only
henry james shoes and music history is just piling up pretty badly
we don’t wanna go home and I know I certainly don’t envy her instead I just have a
san francisco earthquake glance over my Facebook feed and like some
and walk it out of women’s self-defence classes in the 1930s
i wonder if heaven got a ghetto which Celeste found somewhere although
thinking of moving to australia is in Swedish and the auto-translate doesn’t make sense
and buy a sword but at my desk when I put my phone back into my handbag
back to work  I notice that you are online too

David Shapiro

Image by Seán Grisdale.

David Shapiro was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1947 and attended Columbia University and Clare College in Cambridge, UK. A childhood prodigy on the violin, he also took up poetry at an early age and published his first poems in Poetry magazine at the age of 16. Two years later his first collection January (1965) was published.

Shapiro has been associated with the New York School and his work shows the particular influence of John Ashbery, about whom he has also written a book of criticism. However, Shapiro himself considered the “Jewish liturgical tradition […] and his literary heroes, Meyer Schapiro and Walter Benjamin” (Hoover) as even more important influences on his writing.

In the Rocky Mountain Review, Carl Whithaus wrote of Shapiro’s work:

“To call David Shapiro a poet of the surreal, of collage, of the erotic, of endless transition, of formless form, of fin-de- siècle regret is to touch upon the variety of poetic techniques he has explored … he has refused to write poetry which organizes the real into a clean and neat poetic.”

Shapiro has authored over twenty books of literary and art criticism and poetry. He has taught at Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Princeton University, and the Cooper Union School of Architecture. He is a tenured professor of art history at William Paterson University.

Links:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/david-shapiro
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/david-shapiro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shapiro_(poet)

My below poem took its inspiration from the line “Two more bodies were discovered in the Spanish forest fire” from Shapiro’s 1983 poem “Commentary Text Commentary Text Commentary Text”.


~ - ~

August

(4 August)
It’s raining in Scotland and I want to go away somewhere sunny but it’s not easy
to scrape [19 more bodies were discovered in salt water]
together the money so in the end I just buy cheap flights to see my
(6 August) family back in
southern Germany where it is really hot at least compared
to the miserable [25 more
bodies were discovered in salt water]
temperatures of Glasgow I enjoy walking in my sandals (15 August) for
4 days and come
home [51 more bodies were discovered in the hold]
on a late Saturday flight with
a bit of a sunburn as if I had been by (18 August)
the seaside
but I didn’t receive a single postcard from any
of my old
[6 more bodies were discovered in salt water] London
friends which probably means they
are using Instagram as a substitute or don’t have my new (24 August)
address and [5 more bodies
were discovered in salt water] I like (27 August)
the sun-filtered images
of Greece and Spain while the
[71 more bodies were discovered in the back]
weeks pass on and it’s the first week
(28 August) of school again
and summer is almost over
[52 more bodies were discovered in the sand]
anyway.

Bernadette Mayer

A true New York Poet, Bernadette Mayer was born in Brooklyn and spend most of her life in New York City. She received her BA from the New School of Social Research and published her first collection of poems, Moving in 1964.

Although she is associated to the New York School due to her use of daily occasions and her attraction to traditional form, especially the sonnet, her work also shows a particular interest in experimental forms and writing procedures. Her 1994 collection of prose-poems The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters e.g. is a “series of letters never sent, written to unidentified friends, acquaintances, political figures, and poets over a nine-month period and ending with the birth of a baby” (Mayer). Her critically acclaimed Memory (1975) combines photography and narration in a writing process made up of texts and 36 images for each day of July 1971.

Mayer has published over 20 collections of poetry. She has taught at the New School for Social Research and The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York City and now lives and works in East Nassau, New York.

Links:
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/mayer/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/bernadette-mayer
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/bernadette-mayer
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Mayer.php




~ - ~

Sonnet

Are we free? Are we autonomous?
Are these the same questions? you ask
on the back of an old dog-eared shopping list
next to sausage apples milk and grapes

the last line you left off with a dash
as for the answer in a prose conversation
like Will you come home soon, dear?
– I don’t know. I have to see.

it stuck between the cushions of the sofa.
I fished it out when I sat there the other day
trying to write something like a sonnet
while you were reading in the other room.

I want to kiss you for questions more than answers
when our lips part you will say: What was that for?

Maureen Owen

Maureen Owen was born in Graceville, Minnesota and grew up on a farm and the California racetrack circuit, where her parents worked as horse trainers. She attended Seattle University and San Francisco State University before moving to Japan in 1965 to study Zen Buddhism.

Upon her return to the US, she moved to New York City. Owen is usually associated with the New York School and spent several years as Program Coordinator at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in NYC as well as working as editor for the literary magazine Telephone.

Owen has published a total of 10 collections of poetry so far. She now lives in Denver and teaches at Naropa University.

Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maureen_Owen
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Owen.php
http://www.coloradopoetscenter.org/poets/owen_maureen/index.html


My poem below takes its inspiration from Owen’s poem of the same title.


~ - ~

African Sunday

Ni moto.              With the sun at an awkward
       angle          as we sit on the terrace in the afternoon. You
pour a cup of English breakfast and I pour the milk slowly.
Salted                    on white Prussian porcelain
                   and heavy mvule wood.     Kenya is
   thirty     years    ago:                  Na sikuwa hata hai.
I grew up here in white porcelain    faded colours
   from images  of  zebras in the   hall. Why do
you live away now always?
                        Are you coming home soon now?
“  Hakuna, mama.
   Moyo wangu haiwezi
                                       kutulia hapa.      “

Clark Coolidge

Clark Coolidge is associated both with the language movement as well as the New York School. In addition to his career as a poet, he also works as a jazz musician – a fact which is easily recognised in his music use of sonic and syntactical patterns in his work which (as the Poetry Foundation puts it) “engage, and generate meaning”.

In a 1968 poetics statement, Coolidge noted, “Words have a universe of qualities other than those of descriptive relation: Hardness, Density, Sound-Shape, Vector-Force, & Degrees of Transparency/Opacity.”
But apart from these musical elements, it is also abstract painting which provides a strong reference point for Coolidge. As Hoover sums it up in the anthology:

“His arrangements of seemingly unrelated words […] can create a puzzle of disjunction for the uninitiated reader. Yet, once the reader suspends any demand for narration or linear organisation, the words are free to come into relation, like the abstract yet liquid shapes in a Tanguy painting.”

In relation to this Hoover draws attention to a quote by the painter Philip Guston which Coolidge liked to refer to in reference to his understanding of arrangement and movement:

“It cannot be a settled, fixed image. It must of necessity be an image which is unsettled, which has not only not made up its mind where to be but must feel as if it’s been in many places all over this canvas, and indeed there’s no place for it to settle – except momentarily.”

Links:
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/coolidge/
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Coolidge.php
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/clark-coolidge

My own response took Guston’s idea of the constant movement of the (poetic) image quite literally. Taking Coolidge’s “Brill” as a starting point, I set out to rearrange the words of the poem as if they had moved on from their “momentary” positions in the original poem. I created a sound piece from the resulting work.


~ - ~

Joseph Ceravolo

Joseph Ceravolo was born in New York City in 1934 and spend most of his life in New Jersey where he worked as a civil engineer. He attended the New School of Social Research in New York, studying with Kenneth Koch and soon became part of the Second Generation of the New York School. In contrast to most of his fellow New York poets, his poetry is however less conversational, with a “darker sense of wonder” (Hoover) than the witty quips of O’Hara or Koch. His poems’ distorted syntax, elisions, and juxtapositions create a text rich with meanings, yet highly lyrical.

As Peter Schjedldahl writes:

“Ceravolo is a lyric poet of such oddness and purity that reading him all but makes me dizzy, like exercise at a very high altitude. I rarely know what he is talking about, but I can rarely gainsay a word he uses […] there is a dominance of usages I want to call ‘off’ or ‘bent’ like vamped notes in jazz.”

Ceravolo died of cancer in 1988. His work was hard to come by for many years as his collections were out of print. But the 2013 publication of his Collected Poems fortunately means his poems are much more easily available now.


Links:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/joseph-ceravolo
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Ceravolo.php
http://www.josephceravolo.com/poems.html
https://jacket2.org/feature/lyrical-personal-joe-ceravolo



My below poem was inspired by Ceravolo’s “Geological Hymn”.


~ - ~

ideological hymn

this
i doesn’t belong to me
anymore

it
slipped away to start a
life

of
its own in southern france
or

spain
leaving me here without market
value

no
one will buy this poem
now

Ron Padgett

Ron Padgett already showed great enthusiasm for avant-garde poetry in this high school years. At the age of 17, together with fellow students Dick Gallup, Joe Brainard, and the University of Tulsa student-poet Ted Berrigan, he founded the literary journal The White Dove Review which published the likes of  Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, LeRoi Jones, e.e. cummings, and Malcolm Cowley. Padgett went on to Columbia University, where he studied with Kenneth Koch.

Padgett is considered a vital part of the Second Generation of New York School poets but his influences go beyond the boundaries of Manhattan’s Lower Eastside and prominently include the French Surrealists and Dada. As Hoover notes in the anthology:

“Padgett has displayed a playful attitude that is consistent with Dada. […] Like Duchamp, [he] is a conceptual artist who likes to challenge the status of the art object.”

The poet James Tate wrote about Padgett’s work:

“Ron Padgett’s poems sing with absolutely true pitch. And they are human friendly. Their search for truths, both small and large, can be cause for laughter, or at least a thoughtful sigh.”

Padgett is the author of over 20 collections of poetry. He served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2008 to 2013 and continues to live and work in New York City.


Links:
http://www.ronpadgett.com/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ron-padgett
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/ron-padgett



My below poem takes a lot of inspiration from Padgett’s way of challenging the way we define poetry (and art in general) in his work. My material here was a list of encryption types for online cookies.


~ - ~

<safe>

{ Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the net my secrets to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray I prey I pray…}

S-CRYPT_3DES
S-CRYPT_ARCFOUR_IV
S-CRYPT_ARCFOUR
S-CRYPT_BLOWFISH
S-CRYPT_CAST_128
S-CRYPT_CAST_256
S-CRYPT_CRYPT
S-CRYPT_DES
S-CRYPT_DES_COMPAT
S-CRYPT_ENIGMA
S-CRYPT_GhOST
S-CRYPT_IDEA
S-CRYPT_LOKI97
S-CRYPT_MARS
S-CRYPT_PANorAMA
S-CRYPT_RIJNDAEL_128
S-CRYPT_RIJNDAEL_192
S-CRYPT_RIJNDAEL_256
S-CRYPT_RC2
S-CRYPT_RC4
S-CRYPT_RC6
S-CRYPT_RC6_128
S-CRYPT_RC6_192
S-CRYPT_RC6_256
S-CRYPT_SAFER64
S-CRYPT_SAFER128
S-CRYPT_SAFERPLUS
S-CRYPT_SERPENT
S-CRYPT_SERPENT_128
S-CRYPT_SERPENT_192
S-CRYPT_SERPENT_256
S-CRYPT_SKIPJACK
S-CRYPT_TEAN
S-CRYPT_THREEWAY
S-CRYPT_TRIPLEDES
S-CRYPT_TWOFISH
S-CRYPT_TWOFISH128
S-CRYPT_TWOFISH192
S-CRYPT_TWOFISH256
S-CRYPT_WAKE

Tony Towle

“Tony Towle is one of the best of the second generation New York School poets. Winner of an early Frank O’Hara Award. His work is very distinctive within the NY School range: urbane, hilariously ornate, selfconscious, lyrical, discursive, a sensibility that is both Romantic &, at times, neo-Augustan, Pop & high-brow, thoughtful & playful, rhapsodic & dry. A really terrific poet. That is to say, one of our favourites: preposterous & beautiful.”

With this verdict about Towle’s poetry, Ken Bolton is definitely not alone. Throughout the years, Towle has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council of the Arts, the Poets Foundation, and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, along with the aforementioned Frank O’Hara Award in 1970.

He is indeed a true New York poet. He was born in Manhattan in 1939 and has lived in the city most of his life. He started to write in the early 1960 and soon was established as a member of the “second generation” of New York poets after attending writing workshops with Kenneth Koch and Frank O’Hara. As Hoover points out in the anthology, Towle was – like many other New York poets – influenced by the French surrealists, yet:

“Towel’s poems reflect this interest more in their dreamlike rhetoric rather than in their discrete images. In this respect, as well as in its heightened diction and elegance of style, his work resembles that of John Ashberry.”

Towle has published more than a dozen volumes of poetry. He also wrote reviews for Art in America and Arts.

Links: 
http://tonytowle.com/
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/towle/
http://jacketmagazine.com/16/ov-bolt-r-towl.html (Ken Bolton’s Review of The History of the Invitation - New and Selected Poems 1963–2000)
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Towle.html



My poem below takes its inspiration from the colour mix of Towle’s “Random (Re-arrangeable) Study for Views”. I chose to work through the colour names of the nail polishes in my drawer and build a poem from it.

~ - ~

Re-arrangeable in Moonlight

I honestly try Mint Bonbon
sharp and sweet and so adventurously Artful
taste like look Pretty Bang Bang
selfless Queen Victoria Street exits
I have these Satellite Dreams sometimes they upsetting
darkly Berry Potter & Plumbledore saint
Eve’s Mint Candy or apple on a stick
it’s those Night Out fascinations
when I draw Azure Amore
hush the Ocean my little night owl
the dark’s silent horizon Metal Flip wings disappear
she don’t Hip Queens Wear Blue Jeans
she don’t the Amaretto pearls
we just wait along Double Decker Red each time longing
I honestly try Free To Be
with the smoke rising from her Orango Bloom
billowing Beach Babe
time passes Passion For Fashion still
as it rolls down Cromwell Road heavy
raining Acid Drop motions slowly
like the Baker Street vendor the man who disappeared
into Midnight Sapphire changing colour
Soho Peacock feathers all over
the street corner in Deep Red dye
blue flash lid Total Action
she wouldn’t she wouldn’t Wicked
singalong Galaxy starlet
small along the winding of The Thames at 4am
a rip two inches long Lagoon Lace rivers we weren’t careful
tonight So Cool
outside Mayfair Mews urbanist landshape
two girls tuesday Midnight Rocker 
roll down lightly so It’s Hot to walk away

Anselm Hollo

Anselm Hollo was born and raised in Helsinki, Finland. He worked as a poet, translator, editor and journalist in Sweden, Germany, and Austria before coming to the US in 1966.

He took up teaching positions at SUNY Buffalo and the Writers' Workshop in Iowa City where he first met Ted Berrigan with whom he remained very close friends. The Beat movement and New York School was certainly a major influence on Hollo’s writing: even before coming to the US he had translated Ginsberg into Finnish. Another important influence was however William Carlos Williams – another poet he had translated previously. As Paul Hoover notes in the anthology: “Hollo’s work privileges the details of everyday life. He is adept at capturing isolated moments of perception.” A tendency he shares with both Williams, as well as his fellow poets such as Philip Whalen and Berrigan. “Often whimsical and gently satirical in tone, Hollo’s poems are open-ended, valuing an ongoing human attentiveness rather than rejecting closure on the basis of theory.” (Hoover)

Hollo taught creative writing at a wide range of different institutions across the US, including the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, where he held the rank of Full Professor since 1985. Hollo’s many honours and awards included a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, grants from the Fund for Poetry, the Government of Finland’s Distinguished Foreign Translator’s Award, and the Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry. Hollo lived with his wife, the artist Jane Dalrymple-Hollo, in Boulder until his death in 2013.

Links:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/anselm-hollo
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/anselm-hollo
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/anselm-hollo-poet-translator-and-teacher-8473828.html


My below poem is a response to Hollo’s poem entitled “The Dream of Instant Total Representation”. Taking a look at the idea of possible political change and new beginnings, it works with found text I gathered from Twitter under #Greece.

~ - ~

The Dream of Instant Total Revolution

Isn’t there an extra second added today

3 hours before the payment deadline

the rundown confederate crash help

makes history

might crowd funding be the answer?

you can find the Paypal link below

the total debt split across all citizens

is nearly thirty thousand per head

storm clouds literally over the capital

capital or capital

early July heatwave

change – change part 28

the talks continue

litter bins and boarded windows in every town

bailout for bailout for bailout for out

what is happening here is what they have done to

many poorer nations through structural

adjustment on behalf of corporate capital

capital or capital

the talks continue

not often - but in these days I regret

that I did not learn to speak the ancient language

by the time the country closes its banks

few hedge funds had much direct hold

we stand by the people of Greece

default in 2 hours

we stand by the people of Greece

as Fitch downgrades

further into junk status

from ccc to cc plus

we stand

crowds gathering

we stand

O X I