[Wgcp-whc] Lehman visit this Friday

[Richard Deming]

Hello Everyone,

This past Friday, the WGCP met to discuss yeshiva Boys, the most recent book of poems by David Lehman.  The poet will be joining us this Friday to continue the discussion, which will be shaped by a series of questions that have been extrapolated from the most recent session.  I will paste these below.  Lehman will decide on a question or two from what has been assembled and that choice will be the opening of the session this Friday.  From there, the conversation will develop organically.  We will meet this Friday, Feb 8th from 3 PM- 5PM in room B04 of the Whitney Humanities Center.  As ever, all are welcome to come, so feel free to pass word of this session to anyone who might be interested

As you will see, the questions indicate what a generative, insightful session it was.  Again, if anyone needs a copy of the text, I can send a pdf--just email me directly (richard.deming at yale.edu).

Also, here is the introduction to Lehman's group biography of the New York School (enttled The Last Avant Garde) http://jacketmagazine.com/05/tlag-intro.html
Also, here is a link to Lehman's short essay on the differences between song lyrics and poems: http://theamericanscholar.org/brush-up-your-berlin/

cheers,
Richard Deming, Coordinator





Questions: Yale Poetics Group--meeting on 2/8  at 3PM-5PM, Whitney Humanities Center, room B04

--There is often a characteristic wit and humor in Yeshiva Boys (and in the rest of your work as well). What do you see as the role of humor in your work, in this book specifically, and perhaps in poetry at large?

-- How do you determine the field where the public and the private meet?  In other words, given that there are some specifically personal references (names, etc) that are perhaps not general knowledge, how do you determine when and where the personal is represented in such way that it doesn’t exclude readers?

 --You have given a great deal of your critical and editorial attention to John Ashbery and the poets of the New York School.  How have the ideas offered (and enacted) by these poets been important to you?  Also, how would characterize the difference between your work (and aims) and these other writers? Where do you see the differences that characterize your own generation of writers?

--Yeshiva Boys includes some poems that rhyme straightforwardly.  What is the impulse to employ rhyme in such a way?  Can it only be ironic at this point in time?
--Your books of poems tend to move through a variety of styles and modes.  Clearly, this is reflects a kind of openness to form.  Could you say something about what this openness means in terms of your poetics?

--How has your interest in the American songbook informed your poetics?

 --What did you see as being the stakes of Yeshiva Boys (not only the specific sequence but its relationship to the rest of the book)?   In the title sequence you allude to a general concern about making the Holocaust into a fetish.  What is the cultural context that defines the stakes of the book? How are such contexts shaping such discussions?  And what do you see as the relationship between poetry as an art form and such events?
 --If, as you indicate in “Change,” Gilligan’s Island has had more impact than Saul Bellow. Why persist?  In other words, how does our moment determine/define the stakes for poetry?

 --Given the editorial work that you have done in anthologizing, publishing, editing, curating, and so forth. How would you characterize the developments of American poetry over the last (let’s say) 20 years?  What has surprised you?  What have been the positive and negative developments and how has this work shaped your own poetics?

 

 
 

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