NNYSS Newsletter: August-September 2025

Dear friends,

After an August break, the NNYSS newsletter is rather full of news! I hope you enjoy. I'm sorry if I've missed anything! Do let me know if there are October-or-beyond-things afoot...

The New York Public Library is currently showing a small display on Kenneth Koch, called Ballad Salad: Kenneth Koch and the Art of Play. It's on until September 14, in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. Ballad Salad explores elements of playfulness, wit, and humor in the work of Kenneth Koch. This display, drawn entirely from The New York Public Library's Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, also examines Koch's friendships with poets such as John Ashbery, and collaborations with artists Red Grooms, Alex Katz, Niki de Saint Phalle, and others. You can learn more here: nypl.org/balladsalad. 

Marcella Durand’s latest book, A Winter Triangle,the 2024 Poetic Justice Institute Prize recipient, is out from Fordham University Press. Srikanth Reddy writes, in his introduction, that "One might say that Durand is writing the most resonant French poetry in English today." She will be celebrating its publication in Paris on September 11th at Atelier Michael Woolworth.

Laynie Browne's new book, Apprentice to a Breathing Hand, is out with Omnidawn. You can listen to Laynie talking about the book here.

Essay by Stacy Szymaszek is out this month with Krupskaya Books. It's a book written about and with cows, in which human and bovine life give each other meaning. Alongside examinations of music, myth, family, and aging, cows are born, paraded, eaten, brushed, milked and talked to. You can get a copy here.

Mae Losasso has written about Alice Notley for n+1 - it's a characteristically gorgeous, thoughtful piece, and there's a lovely description of the Network's first-ever informal symposium, which happened in Birmingham back in 2018; Alice was there to read, but also to listen and contribute to our discussions.

Siren Recordings have shared, via Soundcloud, a selection of sonic poems drawn from Anne Waldman's The Iovis Trilogy: Colours in the Mechanism of Concealment (Coffee House Press, 2011). You can listen to the album, Anne Waldman: Your Devotee in Rags here

. Waldman's new book, Mesopotopia, came out with Penguin in August.

Mary Maxwell attended EPIC (Ezra Pound International Conference) in Italy in July.  In her presentation she spoke about Pound’s post-St. Elizabeth intersections with various poets including Bill Berkson, John Ashbery, John Wieners and Barbara Guest at Spoleto in 1965.  Frank O’Hara had been asked by the festival’s director Gian Carlo Menotti to suggest American poets to read (others, like Tony Towle and O’Hara himself, were invited but were unable to attend). Maxine Groffsky, Kenward Elmslie and Joe Brainard went along for the ride. As Brainard wrote in his diary: “I could not understand a single word [Pound] said. When you meet him he does not say a word: he rolls his eyeballs around and does not look real. He looks like he belongs on a coin.” Two years later, Brainard would design the cover and title page for the 1967 “Fuck You Press” edition of Pound’s Cantos 110-116, published by Ed Sanders. A few days after Maxwell's talk, Joshua Kotin detailed the history of this pirated edition, circulating a personal copy of from his collection (see attached images, courtesy of Maxwell/Kotin). Some really interesting new avenues of scholarship on Pound and the New York School are beginning to open up...

A reading in celebration of what would have been John Ashbery's 98th birthday took place in Hudson on July 26th, organized by The Flow Chart Foundation. Readers included Eugene Richie, Rosanne Wasserman, Emily Skillings, Karin Roffman, Evan Craig Reardon, Joseph Richie, Charles North, Tracie Morris, Ann Lauterbach, Justin Jamail, Ry Cook, Mandana Chaffa, and Dara Barrois/Dixon.⁠ You can listen to the reading over at Wave Farm: https://wavefarm.org/wf/archive/xcbmpr.

Flow Chart also hosted a reading and conversation between poets Joan Retallack, erica kaufman and Evelyn Reilly, introduced and facilitated by Marcella Durand and Jennifer Firestone, editors of this groundbreaking book of essays: Other Influences: an Untold History of Feminist Avant-Garde Poetry, (see my attached piece for Modern Language Review). 

Also at Flow Chart last month (!) - a reading and discussion of Carrie Hunter’s The Flow of the Poem’s Display of Itself (Roof Books, 2025). Hunter’s book channels John Ashbery’s 'Flow Chart' revealing an extended reflection on influence, community, and what it means to spend one’s life reading and writing poetry. Hunter’s reading was followed by a discussion about poetry communities in the NY School and the Bay Area by Hunter, Marcella Durand, and Ann Lauterbach with an introduction by Roof publisher James Sherry.

Nathan Kernan's biography of James Schuyler, A Day Like Any Other, came out in August with FSG, and there are pieces about it by Claude Peck (including links to two never-before-released recordings of Schuyler reading in his room at the Hotel Chelsea, in 1986), Evan Kindley, Rowland Bagnall, and Martin Stannard, as well as some more thoughts about the book over at The Allen Ginsberg Project (which also has this great piece about the artist John Button).

Keegan Cook Finberg's new book, Poetry in General: How a Literary Form Became Public is available to pre-order from Columbia UP. It explores how poets expanded their practice into the realms of politics, work, and everyday life from 1960 to the present, and considers a compelling array of figures—including Frank O’Hara, Amiri Baraka, Bernadette Mayer, and Eleanor Antin—whose works draw on conceptual techniques to transform official documents and spaces.

Rowland Bagnall has a piece on Jeremy Over's wonderful collection Fourth & Walnut in the current issue of Oxford Poetry.

That's it! With all my best for September,

Rona