New York Poets II: from Edwin Denby to Bernadette Mayer

Mark Ford’s selections from the work of John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, and James Schuyler for The New York Poets: an anthology (2004) offered an exhilarating introduction to the poetic innovations of the ‘New York School’. New York Poets II celebrates the continuing vitality of that unruly ‘school’. The painter and writer Trevor Winkfield, who has worked in New York since the 1960s and knows the scene intimately, joins Mark Ford in the task of mapping this radical sequel to the first anthology. Following a general preface, each selection of works by the eleven poets is preceded by a brief introduction; a bibliography provides an indispensable guide to major publications.

The writers included in New York Poets II span a crucial period in twentieth-century culture. Their poetic responses to their changing times were varied and challenging, and have proved enormously influential on American writing. Linking them is a buried narrative of experiment and creative interaction that brought about the emergence of a new kind of poetry.