All of Life

In the Review’s June 25 issue, Joe Dunthorne writes about a recent oral history of the New York School poets and poses himself a challenge: “How to analyze a poetics of irreverence and improvisation—of life experienced in a perpetual present—without stifling precisely these qualities?” His essay suggests that the poetry in the scene, by writers ranging from Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery to Alice Notley and Eileen Myles, emerged in part from their social and family lives. The vivacity of their work drew from the eclecticism of their world, or, as Dunthorne quotes Notley, “We’re inside each other’s lives.” “Despite the disputes and grievances that run through these pages,” he continues, “there is a sense that what survives of these poets, apart from their poetry, is the generative and spiky sociability that brought them together in the first place.”Dunthorne is an eclectic writer in his own right. He is the author of three novels, including his debut, Submarine (2008), which was adapted into a film by Richard Ayoade; a collection of poetry, O Positive (2019); and a family memoir, Children of Radium (2025), which was reviewed in our pages by Francine Prose. His criticism, essays, poem...