Thursday, November 4 & Tuesday, November 9 - introduction to three "New York Poets"

• David Lehman, excerpt from The Last Avant-Garde
• John Asbhery profile
• John Ashbery, interview
• John Ashbery, "The Instruction Manual"
• paper option #12 Ashbery's "The Instruction Manual" implicitly is critical of what might be called "the ideology of first-hand experience." In this paper, describe that position and then state your position on what you think is Ashbery's position. To what extent are you persuaded by Ashbery's (mostly counter-intuitive) attitude toward experience?
• Frank O'Hara, biographical profile
• Frank O'Hara's energy per Ron Silliman
• Frank O'Hara, "The Day Lady Died"
• Frank O'Hara, "Why I am Not a Painter"
• Billie Holiday - brief biography
• John Yau, "830 Fireplace Road"
• O'Hara, "Like"
• O'Hara, "At the Old Place"
• O'Hara, "Poem" (recorded at Buffalo, 9/25/64; MP3) [note: must enter your Penn ID & password]
• O'Hara per Galway Kinnell in a review essay of 1958
• ut pictura poesis
• Ted Berrigan's poem "3 Pages"
• Ted Berrigan's "3 Pages"
• PoemTalk show on "3 Pages"
• Kenneth Koch, "The Circus" (audio): MP3
• Kenneth Koch, "The Circus" (text)
• Kenneth Koch, "Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams" (1962)
• Kenneth Koch, "Mending Sump" (1960)
• audio: Al Filreis on three major categories of "New York Poets" verse: (1) anti-narrative, (2) non-narrative, and (3) pastiche or appropriation [RealAudio file]
• audio: same as above as an mp3 file
• "pastiche"
• Lytle Shaw, "The Confessions 2"
• Wallace Stevens, "The Snow Man"
• Lytle Shaw explains the connection between "The Confessions 2" and "The Snow Man"
• Lytle Shaw, "At the Old Place"
• Tom Devaney, "Poem (to Al Filreis)" published in Ars Poetica (April 2007)
• Tom Devaney reads "Trying to Live as if It Were Morning" (at the Writers House, Feb. 7, 2000)
  supplemental/optional readings:
• Ted Berrigan, sonnet XV from The Sonnets
• notes on Tom Phillips's A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel
• video: Al Filreis on the art book; on
• Lytle Shaw on O'Hara (Jacket magazine, 1999)
• Kenneth Koch at the Writers House (1998)
• Shawn Walker, poetry reading, recorded from a live webcast held on September 18, 1999 at the Kelly Writers House ()
• Ed Dorn's parody of Williams
• review of David Lehman's book, The Last Avant-Garde

Thursday, November 11 - Williams once more

• William Carlos Williams, "Portrait of a Lady"
• William Carlos Williams, "Portrait of a Lady": as the poem appeared in a 1920 issue of The Dial
• audio: Williams's "Portrait of a Lady," read by Shawn Walker
• video: Al Filreis and Shawn Walker on "Portrait of a Lady" (RealVideo)
• audio: mp3 audio-only version of the above
• Williams, "The pure products of America / go crazy" or "To Elsie"
• audio: Williams reads "To Elsie" (MP3)
• audio: Williams reading "To Elsie" in 1958 (RealAudio version)
• video: Williams reading "To Elsie" (with visual dramatization) followed by a commentary on the poem by Allen Ginsberg
• Symposium on "To Elsie," 1999, with Bob Perelman, Kristen Gallagher, Shawn Walker, and Al Filreis - including discussions of the driverless car, WCW's mixed ethnic background, and modernism and domestic help.
  supplemental/optional readings:
• James Clifford's introduction to The Predicament of Culture in which he interprets "To Elsie" in relation to contemporary cultural anthropology
• commentary on "the white trash" mentioned in "To Elsie" (W)
• recording of a live webcast symposium on "To Elsie" led by Al Filreis, Bob Perelman, Kristen Gallagher, and Shawn Walker with thirty far-flung virtual participants from the Kelly Writers House on July 8, 1999

Tuesday, November 16 & Wednesday, November 17, 9 PM with dinner (special session) - Ashbery and the non-narrative

• John Ashbery, "Some Trees"
• Ashbery reads "Some Trees"
• An 88er's guess at what these trees look like: LINK
• Steven Robinson's paraphrase of "Some Trees"
• Filreis interviews Ashbery
• Ashbery, "What Is Poetry"
• Juliana Spahr on how reading is taught in school
• audio: Al Filreis on aspects of the poetry of Ashbery
• John Ashbery, "Hard Times"
• John Ashbery, "The One Thing That Can Save America"
• John Ashbery, interviewed by Al Filreis, on his anthologized poems and "The One Thing That Can Save America"
• John Ashbery, "The Grapevine"
• John Ashbery, "Crossroads in the Past"
• PoemTalk show on "Crossroads in the Past"
• John Ashbery reads "Crossroads in the Past"
• John Ashbery's PennSound page
• paper option #13 Write a paper that accomplishes just this: an explanation (or "translation" into your own plainest words) of Ashbery's "The Grapevine."
  supplemental/optional readings:
• student report on Ashbery's influence on four language poets
• John Ashbery, "If you Said You Would Come With Me"
• John Ashbery, "Novelty Love Trot"
• recording of a conversation with John Ashbery conducted by Al Filreis, March 2002
• Cid Corman, several recent poems
• Gary Soto, "How Things Work"
• Gertrude Stein per John Ashbery from a 1957 review (W)
• Allen Ginsberg, "Is About" (1996)