scholarly journals German Romantic Tradition in John Ashbery’s "Where Shall I Wander"

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 75-88
Author(s):  
Paweł Marcinkiewicz ◽  
Daniel Pietrek
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
American Literature ◽  
French Literature ◽  
Important Influence ◽  
First Century ◽  
Arthur Rimbaud ◽  
New York School ◽  
John Ashbery ◽  
Frank O'hara ◽  
Late Works

In popular critical and readerly reception, the New York School of poetry was shaped mostly by what Marjorie Perloff calls the tradition of indeterminacy. This was started by Arthur Rimbaud and, a few decades later, developed by Dadaists and Surrealists. Therefore, the tradition of French modernism seems to have been vital for John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, James Schuler, and Barbara Guest, and the poets themselves appeared to confirm this fact. They often visited France privately and as scholars, and lived there for extended periods of time. In the case of John Ashbery, his year-long Fulbright fellowship was prolonged to a decade. Moreover, the New York School poets contributed to the propagation of French literature, being translators, critics and editors of French authors. However, as John Ashbery’s late works prove, literary genealogies are far more complex. German Romantic tradition always exerted an important influence on John Ashbery, and it inspired the New York experimenter to contribute two major poems to the twenty-first century American literature: “Where Shall I Wander” and “Hölderlin Marginalia”.

Denby, Edwin (1903–1983)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harris Feinsod
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Practical Experience ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
New York School ◽  
John Ashbery ◽  
Visual Artists ◽  
Frank O'hara ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Downtown Scene ◽  
James Schuyler

Edwin Denby is best remembered as one of the preeminent critics of dance modernism, yet he was also an accomplished poet and an experienced dancer, choreographer, and librettist. Both his poetic gifts and his practical experience in the theater informed his dance criticism, first collected in Looking at the Dance (1949) and amplified in Dancers, Buildingsand People in the Streets (1965). As the title of his 1965 volume suggests, Denby placed primacy on the pleasures of perception, recording what he saw rather than advocating for a distinct point of view, as did his contemporaries Lincoln Kirstein and John Martin. Denby’s sensibility was widely admired in New York’s postwar avant-garde milieus, and he became an important friend, muse, mentor, and tutelary spirit to visual artists—including Rudy Burckhardt, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, and Alex Katz—and to New York School poets—especially Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, and Anne Waldman. In the last several decades of his life, Denby continued to be a key figure in the downtown scene across several performance genres.

Paris, Poets, and Poverty

Alive Still ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 41-58
Author(s):  
Cathy Curtis
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York School ◽  
John Ashbery ◽  
Frank O'hara ◽  
Chartres Cathedral ◽  
German Woman ◽  
Kenneth Koch ◽  
Fernand Leger ◽  
Village Voice ◽  
Freelance Work

Freelance income and frugality allowed Nell to embark on her first trip abroad in 1950. In Paris, she felt as though she had stepped into an Impressionist landscape. Bowled over by Chartres Cathedral and the museums, she also visited two of her art idols, Jean Hélion and Fernand Léger. She became involved with a German woman with whom she traveled to Florence and Rome. Back in New York, while living with Midi Garth, she enjoyed hanging out with several of the poets later known as the New York School: Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, and Kenneth Koch. Bebop records played at her boisterous parties, which often included marathon games of poker. In her painting, she had embarked on a period of experimentation with figurative imagery. Midi and Brook evokes a pastoral scene in Vermont, where the women vacationed. Meanwhile, her freelance work included serving as designer of the Village Voice.

Surpassing Certainty with Janet Mock: A Dialogue

MELUS ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Timothy S Lyle
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Transgender Women ◽  
First Century ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Abstract Janet Mock—writer, activist, television host, director—has become a leading voice for transgender women of color in the twenty-first century. In 2014, Mock published Redefining Realness with Atria Books. Shortly thereafter, Mock became a New York Times best-selling writer and garnered the critical praise of folks such as bell hooks, Melissa Harris-Perry, Oprah Winfrey, and more. Hooks described Mock’s work as a guide to transformation, Harris-Perry situated her work in the deep tradition of life writing in African American literature, and Winfrey called her a “fearless new voice” who “changed my way of thinking.” In 2017, Mock published her second memoir, Surpassing Certainty, marking a rare moment in which a transgender woman-of-color writer released a second book with a major publisher. During our conversation at Babbalucci, a restaurant in her beloved Harlem neighborhood, Mock reflected on her first book in light of the writing of her sophomore release. She also shared insight about writing love and dating storylines for transgender women of color, an amplified focus in Surpassing Certainty, and she discussed the dynamics of disclosure in narrative and life. Further, she ruminated about what constitutes home for her and how to write about space and place. Such remarks importantly center her Hawaiian roots and her multi-ethnic identity. Finally, Mock offered her most recent thoughts on being a trans woman of color in the public sphere in a turbulent national climate—particularly for folks on the margins of the already-marginalized.

Muslim Representations in Two Post-September 2001 American Novels

2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-89
Author(s):  
Seyed Mohammad Marandi ◽  
Zeinab Ghasemi Tari
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
First Century ◽  
American Novels ◽  
September 11 Attacks ◽  
Significant Point

Several novels have appeared after the September 11 attacks which deal directly or indirectly with the effect of the event on individuals, both inside and outside the United States. Though, the novels often claim to deal with the posttraumatic aftermath of the incident, the writers regularly use Orientalist stereotyping, and it seems that after September 11 these attitudes toward Muslims and Arabs have hardened and even strengthened the old Orientalist discourse. This paper shall focus on Don Delillo’s Falling Man and John Updike’s Terrorist because both novels were New York Times bestsellers and both novelists are prominent figures in American literature. It attempts to examine the way in which the novelists have responded to the September 11, 2001 attacks and how Muslims and their ideologies are represented. The significant point is that though these novels have been written in the twenty-first century, where there has been an increase in contacts and information about Muslims, the writers often use the same cliches and stereotypes about Muslims that have existed since the Middle Ages.

Alice Notley’s Inhabited Spaces

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmine Shamma
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Spatial Theory ◽  
New York School ◽  
Frank O'hara ◽  
The Way

Though Berrigan and Notley were married, this chapter moves away from addressing coterie (as it has received thorough attention) to instead consider the way that the intimacy enforced by living in small spaces shaped the school’s tone and form. This chapter treats the school’s domestic poetry, focusing exclusively on Alice Notley’s Mysteries of Small Houses, a collection of poems devoted to remembering the spaces Notley inhabited, while locating the tendency to address lived-in space as one promoted by Frank O’Hara. Integrating urban and spatial theory to offer a psycho-geographic reading of this poetry, this chapter utilizes material from an original interview personally conducted with Notley devoted to spatial discussions. In this way, this chapter pays homage to previous studies of the school by offering a space for the living poets of The New York School to speak for themselves, while testing the validity of this study, within the study.

Muslim Representations in Two Post-September 2001 American Novels

2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-89
Author(s):  
Seyed Mohammad Marandi ◽  
Zeinab Ghasemi Tari
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
First Century ◽  
American Novels ◽  
September 11 Attacks ◽  
Significant Point

Several novels have appeared after the September 11 attacks which deal directly or indirectly with the effect of the event on individuals, both inside and outside the United States. Though, the novels often claim to deal with the posttraumatic aftermath of the incident, the writers regularly use Orientalist stereotyping, and it seems that after September 11 these attitudes toward Muslims and Arabs have hardened and even strengthened the old Orientalist discourse. This paper shall focus on Don Delillo’s Falling Man and John Updike’s Terrorist because both novels were New York Times bestsellers and both novelists are prominent figures in American literature. It attempts to examine the way in which the novelists have responded to the September 11, 2001 attacks and how Muslims and their ideologies are represented. The significant point is that though these novels have been written in the twenty-first century, where there has been an increase in contacts and information about Muslims, the writers often use the same cliches and stereotypes about Muslims that have existed since the Middle Ages.

Charles Bernstein: Avant-Garde Is a Constant Renewal

boundary 2 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 215-230
Author(s):  
Ian Probstein
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York School ◽  
John Ashbery ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Language L ◽  
Charles Bernstein ◽  
Private Matter

Abstract The essay explores the work of Charles Bernstein in light of constant renewal. John Ashbery, as one of the brightest representatives of the New York School, and Charles Bernstein, as a representative of the language (L = A = N = G = U = A = G = E), have similar attitudes toward language. They have much in common in terms of poetics: in the rejection of loud phrases, prophetic statements, emotions, confessionalism, and certain self-centeredness. Poetry is a private matter for both. Both have poetics built on the “oddness that stays odd,” as Bernstein himself put it, paraphrasing Pound's “news that stays news.” Both are aimed at renovating the language, and the verses of both are built on fragmentation, collage, moving from one statement to another without preparation. However, in Ashbery, whose poems are surreal, these transitions are smoother, based on an apparent connection, what Bernstein calls “hypotaxis” or “associative parataxis.” In contrast, Bernstein's poetry is built on parataxis; it is “bumpy,” in the poet's own words.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document