Lumpy pudding

Judging a poem is like judging a pudding or a machine. One demands that it work. Poetry succeeds because all or most of what is said or implied is relevant; what is irrelevant has been excluded, like lumps from pudding and 'bugs' from machinery. (Wimsatt & Beardsley)

Here we celebrate the excluded, lumpy parts of the pudding!

Jul 19, 2009 1:24am
The New York School? L-R: standing, Patsy Southgate, Bill Berkson, John Ashbery; seated, Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch. - Frank O’Hara’s loft, 1964. Photograph: Mario Schifano. “Okay, the New York School. In 1965 there was a poetry week as part of the Festival of Two World in Spoleto. O’Hara made up the list of the American poets to be invited. Not all his selections were invited; they wouldn’t invite Ginsberg because he had been there a year or two before and taken his clothes off on stage. Maybe half the poets from the U.S. were New York poets, including me. Somebody had the bright idea to invite Stephen Spender to be the master of ceremonies. The first reader was to Barbara Guest, and Spender got up and said, “Barbara Guest belongs to the New York School of poets, whose main distinction, as I see it, is that they all write about painting.” That was all he said about Barbara. So it was a putdown. He communicated to this international audience a sense that to be “New York School” was to be party to a cabal.” - Bill Berkson (Source)

The New York School?

L-R: standing, Patsy Southgate, Bill Berkson, John Ashbery; seated, Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch. - Frank O’Hara’s loft, 1964. Photograph: Mario Schifano.

“Okay, the New York School. In 1965 there was a poetry week as part of the Festival of Two World in Spoleto. O’Hara made up the list of the American poets to be invited. Not all his selections were invited; they wouldn’t invite Ginsberg because he had been there a year or two before and taken his clothes off on stage. Maybe half the poets from the U.S. were New York poets, including me. Somebody had the bright idea to invite Stephen Spender to be the master of ceremonies. The first reader was to Barbara Guest, and Spender got up and said, “Barbara Guest belongs to the New York School of poets, whose main distinction, as I see it, is that they all write about painting.” That was all he said about Barbara. So it was a putdown. He communicated to this international audience a sense that to be “New York School” was to be party to a cabal.” - Bill Berkson (Source)
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