The New York School Diaspora: A Reading

This panel will showcase the lingering and salutary influence on American poetry of the poets of the New York School: John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, and James Schuyler. The New York School Diaspora is wide-ranging, consisting of writers who honor the virtues of play, wit, the chaos of reality, and the belief that, to paraphrase Frank O’Hara, life is too important to strangle with seriousness. This tradition deserves not only more adherents but more recognition and analysis from critics. The panelists will read some of their own New York School-inspired poems and discuss the School’s importance to their work and to American poetry.