This paper focuses on the work of the poet/art critic John Yau, who in many ways draws on and extends the legacy of the poet/art critics of the New York School, in particular Frank O’Hara. A comparative reading of two such poems from the angle of “provocative spectatorship” illuminates not only the similarities between O'Hara and Yau but also the differences in aim, and of course cultural context. Yau’s manipulation of the elements of language goes beyond the quasi-diaristic “personalism” of O’Hara. Yau’s commitment to epistemological adventure, nevertheless, does not leave his predecessors behind, but rather supports his recuperation of the value of their work as art critics. Here the paper begins a two-tier trajectory for tracing and distilling Yau’s poetics. One tier is articulated through various moments in Yau’s defense of O’Hara’s writings on art against the canonical art critical tradition represented by Clement Greenberg and his disciples. The second tier explores resonances between Yau’s challenges to the presumptions of Greenbergian art criticism and Yau’s poetic response to moments of unglossed perception. The final focus in this initial inquiry into John Yau’s poetics concerns the profound degree to which his “situated knowledge” as a Chinese American informs his alienated scrutiny of the “medium cool” distance of pop art and postmodern celebration of surfaces. In delineating these aspects of John Yau’s work, I hope to show how John Yau’s poetics of looking operates on several levels and across several discourses at once, while maintaining an intellectual, aesthetic, and ethical integrity.
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