Currently reading David Lehman's The Last Avant-Garde, The Making of the New York School of Poets. Only sixty pages in, but I thought I should report the most impressive biographical fact read so far: At Harvard, Kenneth Koch, a 21-year old rifleman just returned from WWII, wrote his class notes in unrhymed iambic pentameter. He wrote his class notes in iambic pentameter! Reading this last night, I barely suppressed the urge to yell the news through the house. I mean, what bio detail could epitomize he, Ashbery and O'Hara's playful-with-the-serious aesthetic more? But I bit my tongue. My wife, angrily reading plogs, would not have been as impressed as you.
1 comment:
This looks great, Marcus. I think I saw this in the library the other day and was foolish enough to not get it. Ah, another day! What an amazing detail about Koch. Nice lil' post.
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