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Article: Partying on Parnassus: the New York School Poets.(Review)
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- October 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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David Lehman's The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets(1) examines the lives, work, and influence of John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler in what seems to be order of importance. To put my cards on the table, as Lehman would have a critic do, I declare that none of these poets has written what I would call a single poem of any importance, although some of them have written plausible light verse.
Lehman states the problem succinctly:
Though he is America's best-known poet, with a strong readership in Britain
and a larger international following than any of his contemporaries,
Ashbery remains an ...