Reframing the New York School: <em>Public Access Poetry</em> and the Screening of Poetic Coterie

Abstract

Reframing the New York School:Public Access Poetry and the Screening of Poetic Coterie Ben Olin (bio) Josephine the mouse renounces the individual act of singing in order to melt into the collective enunciation of "the immense crowd of the heros of [her] people." —Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature1 The academy of the future is/Opening its doors" —John Ashbery, "Last Month"2 Introduction In a snapshot taken in 1971, the New York School poets Ted Berrigan and John Ashbery pose on the sidewalk in front of the St. Regis Hotel; Berrigan—who stands slightly closer to the camera—raises his palm toward the lens, playfully blotting out half of Ashbery's face.3 As the critic Reva Wolf has noted, the staginess of the shot and the poets' amused expressions, implies a deliberate visual reference to Berrigan's textual appropriations of Ashbery's work: Both of them know that Berrigan's gesture parallels his poetic appropriations of Ashbery's work. Berrigan's willful covering up of a good portion of the elder poet's face also makes a "mess" of the convention of the double portrait—which is an added "message" of his pose.4 As Wolf suggests, Berrigan was renowned for his poetic plunderings—perhaps most notoriously he created his poem, "Frank O'Hara's Question from [End Page 47] 'Writers and Issues' by John Ashbery" (1969) by lifting text directly from an essay that Ashbery had written on Frank O'Hara.5 Berrigan's aim was not simply to plagiarize the work of Ashbery or O'Hara, but rather—as in the photographic double portrait—to superimpose himself on their texts through a process of cut and paste. Rather than starting with a blank page, Berrigan gatecrashes the work of his mentors, emerging from the midst of a pre-existing textual corpus. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. John Ashbery and Ted Berrigan in front of the St. Regis Hotel, 1971. Photo by Gerard Malanga (reprinted in Nice to See You. Homage to Ted Berrigan, ed. Anne Waldman (Saint Paul, MI. Coffee House Press, 1991), 231. The photograph offers a valuable frame of reference for the cable TV show Public Access Poetry (1977–1978), which, I argue, similarly documents the imbrication—both stylistic and social—of successive generations of New York School poets. Through a series of close readings, this essay will show how these poets illustrated the social fabric of their local literary scene by improvising with the rudimentary studio equipment, utilizing cross-fades, layering, and reaction shots to juxtapose friends and mentors. This performance of a relational network is especially important to consider in the case of New York School writers, whose work is suffused with references to a broader intersocial web of friends, acquaintances, and fellow poets. I argue that the process of visually "screening" this community of second- and third-generation New York School poets illuminates the collaborative and utopian backdrop to their work, highlighting elements that might evade a page-bound appraisal of their literary legacy. [End Page 48] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Screen capture from Public Access Poetry (broadcast on April 20, 1977). Screen Test At first glance, the title Public Access Poetry suggests a Habermasian "public sphere"—an electronic agora in which the "general public" can access literature, or even become poets themselves—a form of poetry by and for "the people."6 The notion of "public access" poetry implies an open-door policy, where—like the contemporary "poetry slam"—one can participate regardless of experience, connections, or credentials. However, while New York School poets typically decried professional credentials and privileged the use of vernacular forms, access to this poetic community was strictly regulated. As Eileen Myles, one of the better known "third-generation" New York School poets, explained: All the scenes were very intense, very self-conscious, and energized by the fact that only they knew. At the time, there was still this sense of privacy, this kind of secret society thing. The connectivity which we have now just didn't exist. We would all be sitting next to one another in the same...