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Category Archives: Velvet Underground
New York School Sons (to Delmore Schwartz)
The New Yorker has posted a piece by John Ashbery on the writer Delmore Schwartz. The essay, which Ashbery first gave as a talk in Japan in 1996, has not been easily accessible in print until now, but it will apparently … Continue reading
Garth Risk Hallberg and the Formative Influence of Frank O’Hara and the New York School
The literary world has been abuzz recently over the publication of City on Fire, Garth Risk Hallberg’s massive new novel about New York City in the 1970s. The 36-year old Hallberg received a jaw-dropping $2 million advance for the book (his first … Continue reading
Patti Smith on Lou Reed: “He recited the great poets — Rupert Brooke, Hart Crane, Frank O’Hara”
As someone who has been trying to make the case that there’s an important and under-recognized connection between the New York School of poets and Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, I know that for some skeptics, one nagging fact gets … Continue reading
Posted in Frank O'Hara, Lou Reed, Music, Patti Smith, Velvet Underground
The New York School, and more, in Louisville
I’ve just gotten back from the very fun and stimulating Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900 (directed by the esteemed poetry scholar Alan Golding) which, this year at least, amply demonstrated that scholarly work devoted to the poets of the New York School … Continue reading
Lou Reed (1942-2013)
As everyone in the world knows — even, apparently, the Vatican’s culture minister — Lou Reed died this past Sunday at the age of 71. The news was shocking and felt impossible — Reed just seemed permanent, eternal, an unstoppable force. … Continue reading
Posted in Andy Warhol, Gerard Malanga, Lou Reed, Music, NY School Influence, Velvet Underground
Walter De Maria and “The Artist” by Kenneth Koch (with a note on the Velvet Underground)
A few days ago, the artist Walter De Maria passed away at 77. As the New York Times obit has it: “Walter De Maria, a reclusive American sculptor whose multifaceted achievement and sly Dadaist humor helped give rise to earthworks, … Continue reading
Posted in Kenneth Koch, Lou Reed, Music, Velvet Underground, Visual Art
Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and “Frank O’Hara Hit”
Move over Mad Men, it’s indie rock’s turn to namecheck Frank O’Hara. In another (very welcome) sign of O’Hara’s continuing afterlife in some surprising corners of pop culture, a few months back Thurston Moore — one of the founding members … Continue reading
Andrew Epstein