Locus Solus: The New York School Poets’ Missing Manifesto

Abstract

Although the New York School of poetry is at its core a literary coterie, critics have been hesitant to consider the New York School an organized group. An exploration of Locus Solus, a literary journal edited by John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, Harry Mathews, and James Schuyler, however, reveals that the poets were most definitely concerned with presenting themselves as a joint force in American poetry. Through close reading and archival research, I untangle the poets’ instrumentalization of Locus Solus as an elaborate manifesto, exposing how the first three volumes were used to present the New York School poets and poetics, trace a poetic lineage, and put forward a succeeding generation.