This study examines the presence of poetic form in First and Second Generation New York School Poetry. Because New York School writing—where its existence is conceded—seems formless, it has yet to be viewed under a formal lens. Therefore, this study is the first of its kind. In what follows, works by Frank O’Hara, Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley and Ron Padgett are contextualized and closely read for form, with an attention to the shaping propensity of inhabited spaces. While it is agreed that the external environment has the potential to influence shapes and forms of writing, domestic spaces also offer parameters which are traceable onto the page. New York School poets lived in and wrote from alternative domestic spaces—untidy, disordered, congested apartments in downtown New York City. The forms of their poems are accordingly untraditional. New York School stanzas often take on the contours of these spaces, becoming linguistic rooms riddled with the tensions of indoor urban life. After outlining New York School poetry and addressing contemporaneous urban theories, this study asks: what role does the space of writing have on the shape of writing? More specifically, are New York City apartments reflected in the forms of New York School poems? Through close-reading and formal analysis, it becomes possible to affirm that New York School Poetry is formal, and that its form is distinctive in that in its variances, it makes it possible for the tensions and dynamics of living within the constraints of inner urban spaces to be fully pronounced and inflected. This is a study of the formal representations of those inflections.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:581093 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Shamma, Yasmine |
| Contributors | O'Donoghue, Bernard |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:2872abaf-abcc-428e-9bb7-88f9b89206dc |
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