The New York School is a group of poets I’ve only recently made much effort to get into.

Many, many years ago, I bought a copy of one of John Ashberry’s books, knowing that he was considered a great poet, a seminal poet. But I went into it way too early in my poetical education and could not, for the life of me, get into it. The strategies he was attempting made no sense to me and so his poetry made no sense.

Since then, of course, I have tried to slowly school myself on Ashberry and the New York School and to teach myself their styles, tendencies, and tropes.

I’ve read up on some Ashberry, though I’ve yet to read either of his most important books – The Tennis Court Oath and Self-Potrait in a Convex Mirror. A year ago, I got myself a copy of some edition or other of selected poems by Kenneth Koch (it’s in the other room, but I’m too lazy to go find it right now). I haven’t yet picked up any James Schulyer or Barbara Guest.

But I am reading Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems.

Had I started with Frank O’Hara, rather than Ashberry, all those years ago, things might have gone much smoother. He is far more approachable (by which I do not mean simplistic) than Ashberry and more serious than Koch (I can only stand so much light-hearted poetry). His deeply personal narration – chronicling small moments from his life in New York City (the city itself featuring far more prominently than in Ashberry and even more than in Koch) – nicely mixes up lighter, amusing fare with more serious musings on privation, politics, and art. While mostly narrative, I should note that several pieces toss in there the kind of surrealism one associates with the New York School (which might be better associated, perhaps, with automatic writing than with Surrealism – though all of the New York School was deeply influenced by French poetry, with Ashberry just recently translating Rimbaud’s Illuminations).