PSA Talks: Ron Padgett on Kenneth Koch & Frank O’Hara

Poet, memoirist, and translator Ron Padgett discusses the friendship between two New York School poets. If you enjoyed this video, please “Like” and “Subscribe” for more. You can support our work directly by becoming a member: http://poetrysociety.givecloud.co/membership. Members get free live-streaming access to Poetry Society events. Your support helps us connect poets to readers like you. The Poetry Society of America, the nation’s oldest poetry organization, was founded in 1910. Its mission is to place poetry at the crossroads of American life. The PSA transforms public spaces into sites for imaginative encounters with poems, engages diverse and often underserved communities, amplifies the voices of poets around issues of common concern, and honors their aesthetic contributions to our lives. *** Ron Padgett’s How Long was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry and his Collected Poems won the LA Times Prize for the best poetry book of 2014 and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, from whom he also received the Frost medal. Padgett’s most recent collection is Pink Dust (NYRB). In the fall of 2025, Coffee House Press will issue his Very Collected Poems. Padgett’s translations include Zone: Selected Poems of Guillaume Apollinaire (NYRB). Seven of his poems were used in Jim Jarmusch’s film Paterson. New York City has been his home base since 1960. Author photo by John Sarsgard.