SCHC 455 H02 20679

EngLit, Humanities, AIU

Notes:

This course will examine the work of a group of poets based in New York City between the 1950s and the 1980s. Borrowing their name from the school of Abstract Expressionist painters that became an international phenomenon and helped cement New York as the center of the art world in the years after World War II, these poets collectively created a vision of poetry that made new connections between art and popular culture, tradition and experiment, as well as between seriousness and fun. Together we will think about this work and what it means to read it now, paying particular attention to what it tells us about the changing experience of gender and sexuality in the United States over the past 50 years.In addition to poetry by figures including John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Eileen Myles, Alice Notley, Joe Brainard, Ted Berrigan, Bernadette Mayer, and Lorenzo Thomas, we will also spend time looking at the art and listening to the music that made that cultural moment so fascinating and influential.