Background, strona 2

Among the poets who left their traces on Shapiro's poetry there was Frank O'Hara. Although Shapiro rejected the poetic candor of the older poet, some influences of O'Hara's work remain discernible. According to critic and poet Stephen Paul Miller, when the two poets met, Shapiro was impressed by the seriousness with which O'Hara regarded poetry.

Frank O'Hara was the "heir and curator" of the American vernacular - its everyday dimension and idiosyncrasy, too. In simple terms, in his poems, he often resorted to everyday colloquial language. He would construct a poem reusing bits of conversations that he overheard in the street etc. His poetry was based on the principle of "personism," thus listing the poet's everyday experiences. That resulted in threads of very colloquial reports on reality - or catalogs.

Also Shapiro would use in his poems bits of everyday conversations (usually quoting his family members), but in a reworked form which deprived them of familiar associations. 

As for his inspirations, O'Hara shared other New York School poets' reverence for French symbolism and the Surrealists, but privately, he also admired Russian poets like Pasternak and Mayakovsky. Shapiro quoted similar sources of poetic inspiration. And just like O'Hara, he was fascinated by the visual arts and befriended painters like Jasper Jones or Jackson Pollock. This interest was generally shared by the whole of the New York School, but it was O'Hara and Shapiro who spoke explicitly about their respect for painting. 

You can read O'Hara's poems here.

O'Hara died tragically at age 40 in a traffic accident at the beach.

 Interested? You will find more reading here

A person who played a particularly significant role in Shapiro's life as a poet was Kenneth Koch.* Shapiro met Koch already in 1962, at the Wagner College Writers' Conference. It was Koch - a poet associated with the so-called New York School - who sent Shapiro's poems to influential editors, consequently offering the teenage poet an opportunity to launch a professional writing career. Koch appreciated and promoted Shapiro's poetry (see here). The two became friends and began a long-lasting poetic collaboration.

In the 60s and 70s, the two poets ran experimental courses in creative writing for children. Koch, back then a teacher at Columbia, had created a pedagogical system encouraging children to write poetry. In so doing, he followed the philosophy of the Dadaists, which invited free expression of ideas by means of poetry. Koch wrote several books dealing with this topic, including "Wishes, Lies and Dreams: Teaching Children to Write Poetry" (1970). The collaborative fruit of the experimental classes can also be found in Shapiro's third volume, "A Man Holding an Acoustic Panel." Later, Shapiro went on to write poetry with his son Daniel (b. 1983).

Kenneth Koch is considered one of "the few truly comic" representatives of the New York School of Poetry. His direct influence on Shapiro's poetry is visible as a certain degree of whimsicality, which can be both funny and irritating at times. Other traits of Koch's poetry that are detectable in Shapiro's work include parody and playfulness. Despite his evident pathos, Shapiro is not a dead serious poet and does not avoid playing with language, which includes the use of travesty and puns. This quality of Shapiro's poetry along with some Dadaistic and surrealistic inclinations that are therein present may be interpreted as Kochsian (rather than Ashberyan).

Interestingly, David Shapiro was of the opinion that Kenneth Koch was neither fully understood nor adequatly appreciated as a poet.

Both poets died aged 77.

You can read one of Koch's poems here.