Statutes of Liberty: The New York School of Poets

218 Pages·1993·20.874 MB·Language, Discourse, Society

by  Geoff Ward (auth.)

STA TOTES OF LffiERTY
Statutes of Liberty
The New York School of Poets
GeoffWard
Senior Lecturer in English
University 0/ Liverpool
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-22500-2 ISBN 978-1-349-22498-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-22498-2
©GeoffWard 1993
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 18t edition 1993
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Referenee Division,
St. Martin's Press, Ine., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1993
ISBN 978-0-312-09152-1
Ubrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publieation Data
Ward, Geoff, 1954-
Statutes of liberty : the New York school of poets / Geoff Ward.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical referenees and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-09152-1
1. American poetry-New York (N. Y.)-History and criticism.
2. American poetry-2Oth eentury-History and criticism. 3. New
York (N.Y.)-Intellectuallife-20th century. 4. Schuyler, James
-Criticism and interpretation. 5. O'Hara, Frank-Criticism and
interpretation. 6. Ashbery, John-Criticism and interpretation.
I. Title.
PS255.N5W37 1993
811' .540997471-<1c20 92-37049
CIP
Contents
Copyright Acknowledgments vü
List of Abbreviations vüi
Preface ix
Introduction: The New York School of Poets 1
1 James Schuyler and the Rhetoric of Temporality 10
Poetry of Deep and Layered Space 10
Schuyler' s Mortal World 14
The Rhetoric of Temporality 24
Shadows and Margins 29
2 Frank O'Hara: Accident and Design 36
Grace and the Important Utterance 36
O'Hara in the American Grain 52
'It is Possible isn't it': O'Hara's Timekeeping 60
3 Ashbery and Influence 83
The English Ashbery 83
The Old Magical Notions 94
Dreaming of America 105
Anxieties of Influence 113
Heaney Waves the Big Stick 120
Collaboration and its Sub-Text 126
'Wet Casements' 130
v
vi Contents
4 Lyric Poets in the Era of Late Capitalism 135
Botanizing on the Asphalt 135
Postmodernism and the End of Representation 146
The Fate of Perception: 'Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror' 156
The Perception of Fate: 'A Wave' and 'loe's lacket' 165
Postscript: Going Around Cities 177
Notes 190
Bibliography 197
Index 203
Copyright
Acknowledgements
I should like to thank the following individuals and publishers for
perrnission to quote from material for which they hold the copy
right: John Ashbery and the Ecco Press for perrnission to quote 'Two
Scenes' and 'The Thinnest Shadow' from Some Trees, copyright © by
John Ashbery 1956, published in 1978 by the Ecco Press; John Ashbery
for permission to quote lines 1-8 from "'They Dream Only of
America", and lines 1-24 from 'Wet Casements', from Houseboat
Days (New York: Viking/Penguin, 1977); Alice Notley for perrnis
sion to quote 'Angst' by Ted Berrigan; Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., for
perrnission to quote from The Collected Poems of Frank Q'Hara by
Frank O'Hara, copyright © 1971 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, Inc. for perrnission to quote excerpts from
'Growing Dark', 'The Snow', 'Song' from The Morning of the Poem by
James Schuyler, © 1976, 1978, 1980 by James Schuyler; Darragh Park,
literary executor of James Schuyler, for perrnission to quote the last
seven lines from 'Flashes', pp. 51-2, Freely Espousing (Sun Books,
1979) and lines 13 to 21 of 'Blue' from The Crystal Lithium (Random
House, 1972). Every effort has been made to locate copyright holders
and obtain their permission for material to be used in this book: if I
have inadvertently failed to do so, I can only apologize, and assure
any such copyright holder that I will be happy to put maUers right
in any subsequent edition of this book.
vii
List of Abbreviations
James Schuyler:
FE Freely Espousing
CL The Crystal Lithium
MP The Morning of the Poem
FD AFewDays
Frank O'Hara:
CP The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara
AC Art Chronicles
SP Selected Plays
SSWNY Standing Still and Walking in New York
John Ashbery:
ST Some Trees
TCO The Tennis Court Oath
RM Rivers and Mountains
TP Three Poems
VN The Vermont Notebook
SPCM Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
HD Houseboat Days
W A Wave
Ashbery /Schuyler:
NN A Nest of Ninnies
viii
Preface
My personal debts are many and varied. I am grateful to the Univer
sity of Liverpool for granting aperiod of leave, during which a good
portion of this book was written, and to my colleagues in the Depart
ment of English Language and Literature and elsewhere, particu
larly Tony Barley, Simon Dentith, David Seed, and John Thompson.
The British Academy, and the University of Liverpool Research and
Development Fund, provided grants on separate occasions for re
search visits to New York which were of incalculable help in ena
bling me to write with confidence about what I have now seen, as
weIl as read about. I am grateful to the staff of the Museum of
Modem Art, particularly Janis Ekdahl (Assistant Director of the
Library),while Waldo Rasmussen (Executive Director, International
Circulating Exhibitions) who worked closely with Frank O'Hara,
helped me get a clear and detailed sense of his work and life outside
the poems. For hospitality in New York and Boston, I thank Jean
Blondel and Bill Corbett, Steve Finbow and Clare Lees. Tony Tanner
in Cambridge and Barry Wallenstein at the City University of New
York kindly invited me to give papers to their colleagues and gradu
ate students that helped sharpen my thinking, particularly in rela
tion to the politics of New York poetry, debated in Chapter Four.
Neil Reeve's decision to publish an early version of Chapter One as
an article in The Swansea Review came as areal encouragement. I am
grateful to the editors of The Cambridge Quarterly for commissioning
reviews of contemporary poetry, portions of which have been re
worked in what folIows. As Series Editor, Denise Riley encouraged
this book from the start, and in the closing stages gave it all the
benefits of a rigorously close reading, and a deep knowledge of the
poetry.
It is customary in the preface to an academic book to thank the
staff of university libraries, where research is supposed to be done,
and I am grateful to the Inter-Library Loan Service in the Sydney
Jones Library at Liverpool. Unfortunately I have never been able to
work in libraries, and so wrote this book at horne using, for the most
part, my own copies of texts. I have been collecting poetry by O'Hara
and the New York School since the mid-1970s, an enjoyable but not
always straightforward pursuit, given transatIantic distance and the
ix
x Preface
fugitive nature of 'small press' poetry publishing. In consequence I
owe a major and continuing debt to the independent British book
seIlers who specialize in this area, and without whose knowledge,
and sometimes complex efforts, this book could most definitely not
have been written: I thank Paul Green, Alan Balsey, Peter Riley, Iain
Sinclair and, aboveaIl, Nick Kimberley from his time at Compen
dium.
John Ashbery answered all my (frequently banal) questions with
unfailing patience, good humour, and readiness to get dates and
details right. I expected erudition and intellectual hospitality be
cause the poems have those qualities, but the poems are in a sense
common property; I had no right to the kindliness, and the wish to
be straightforwardly understood, that I was shown. James Schuyler
died while I was preparing my typescript for the press. Schuyler
wrote poems of great rhetorical subtlety, their seemingly casual and
improvisatory air suddenly revealing emotional depths and com
plexity. Apparently insecure and reclusive until very late in his life,
he had started to give successful public readings at the time of his
death. I saw him read with John Ashbery at the 92nd Street Y in the
winter of 1989, a bear-like man with DennisHealey eyebrows and a
surprisingly confident manner, reading superb, mostly unpublished
work, that will add to his growing reputation.
To Marion Wynne-Davies I owe much more than I can say here.
Among her invaluable gifts to me has been the understanding that a
book finally gets done when serious play is put to work. This book
says that a poem is the play of words, against time: Clifford Ward,
my father, is the only voice I hear that could persuade me that, in the
end, there is a broader perspective in which even time will be folded
up, and put away. Statutes of Liberty is dedicated to the memory of
my mother, Marjorie, who would have heartily disliked the subject,
and been delighted to see the book.