Seamus Perry and Mark Ford discuss the lives and works of Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery, close friends and leading lights of the New York School, who sought to create an anti-academic, hedonistic poetry, freeing themselves from the puritan American tradition.

To listen series one of Modern-ish Poets, and all our other Close Readings series in full, covering literature from Ancient Greece to the present day, sign up here:

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Series one of Modern-ish Poets looks at Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas Hardy, Stevie Smith, A. E. Housman, Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney and Robert Lowell.

Further reading on O'Hara and Ashbery in the LRB:

C.K. Stead: https://lrb.me/steadashberypod

John Bayley: https://lrb.me/bayleyashberypod

Stephanie Burt: https://lrb.me/burtashberypod

John Kerrigan: https://lrb.me/kerriganashberypod

This episode was first published on the LRB Podcast in June 2022.