Talking Poetry

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.

Some critics consider Shapiro a member of "the tribe of John" (Ashbery, probably the most renowned 20th century American poet, 1927-2017), while some others claim Shapiro's poetry is only influenced by Ashbery (or "Ashberyan"). I tend to side with the latter.

There are many common features and shared points of view in both poetics. For example, the reader may notice that both in Ashbery's and in Shapiro's poetry, the speaking persona is simultaneously producing the poem and analyzing it, not without irony. Perhaps Ashbery owes this aspect of his poetry to Wallace Stevens, one of the poetic standards that he appreciates. Shapiro adopted it from Ashbery, thus becoming another American poet writing in the self-reflexive mode, where the "I" ponders on itself, and resulting in poetry which describes the problems of producing poetry. This self-referentiality of Shapiro's and Ashbery's poetics allows for the continuous opportunity of introspection, a prolific source of poetic inspiration. 

It all began quite early in Shapiro's life, when he started to correspond with the older poet before they met in person. The friendship continued, and in the 1970s Shapiro decided to write his Ph.D. about Ashbery's poetry. That work reveals how much admiration Shapiro had for his friend's poetic skilfulness and resourcefulness displayed in the experiments that Ashbery dares to perform in his poems, which are often disjunctive, verbally dazzling, and difficult to understand. Ashbery provokes the reader by shifting the focus from one line to another so the meaning fluctuates.

Shapiro is visibly fascinated by some of the solutions proposed by the older poet, and this is particularly noticeable in his earlier volumes like "Poems from Deal" - specifically, in the use of collages/assemblages, streams of consciousness, recycling random headlines etc. 

To get a glimpse of Ashbery's poetry, you may like to have a look at his Self-portrait in a convex mirror.

Interested? You will find more here