Introduction
This introduction tells the story of the Second Generation New York School—one of aesthetic and academic lineage and, for at least a decade, intimate bond. The Second Generation New York School poets are historically situated as a bohemia (citing Geoff Ward’s use of the term) and theoretically situated as ecocritical. The ways in which the school engaged in ancestral hopping (of Modernists) are outlined. Following this, the introduction integrates existing discussion of postmodern poetic form, alerting the reader to critical agreements regarding New York School poetry’s “haphazard” form (according to Helen Vendler), while defining form for the purposes of the subsequent revisionist discussion. While much of the introduction engages in this kind of critical, social, and historical contextualization, it also argues that the title of the school, though a misnomer, is necessary, and that the complexities of this particular school’s constructions have yet to be fully apprehended.