Synopses & Reviews
Statutes of Liberty was the first book on The New York School of Poets, and gave an acclaimed account of its key figures: John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and James Schuyler. This second edition contains up-to-date material on the group and its growing influence on postmodern poetics. A new postscript focuses on the work of Ashbery, currently the most esteemed American poet since Wallace Stevens, and his prolific output in the 1990s, including his 200-page epic poem
Flow Chart.
Review
“This is a genuinely critical book, one that no one interested in postwar American poetry will want to miss.” —Marjorie Perloff, Stanford University
“Geoff Ward offers astute readings of several of the most engaging, original, and socially cogent American poets of the past half-century.” —Charles Bernstein, SUNY Buffalo
About the Author
Geoff Ward is Professor of English, University of Dundee.
Table of Contents
Introduction: The New York School of Poets *
Part I: James Schuyler and the Rhetoric of Temporality *
Poetry of Deep and Layered Space *
Shuyler's Mortal World *
The Rhetoric of Temporality *
Shadows and Margins *
Part II: Frank O'Hara: Accident and Design *
Grace and the Importance Utterance * O'Hara in the American Grain *
"It is Posssible isn't it": O'Hara's Timekeeping *
Part III: Ashbery and Influence *
The English Ashbery *
The Old Magical Notions *
Dreaming of America *
Anxieties of Influence *
Heavy Waves the Big Stick *
Collaboration and its Sub-Text *
"Wet Casements" *
Part IV: Lyric Poets in the Era of Late Capitalism *
Botanizing on the Asphalt *
Postmodernism and the End of Representation *
The Fate of Perception: "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" *
The Perception of Fate: "A Wave and Joe's Jacket"