New York School

New York in the 1960s was full of diversity, life, art, and change. During this time, a group of like-minded friends, artists, and poets, came together in the social scene of the 1950s and 1960s in New York and formed a supportive group of individuals. Their creativity flowed freely, they supported one another, and their work thrived. Poetry and art intermingled; each informed and influenced the other, and the poets and painters maintained strong working relationships. This is what made up the New York School Poetry Movement.

New York School Poetry Movement

The New York School is a group of forward-thinking and experimental painters and poets with shared interests. They lived or worked in downtown Manhattan during the 1950s and 1960s and bonded over their shared interests, beliefs, and styles. While their styles and creations varied widely, each individual in the group was quick-witted, polite, refined, and relaxed. Their work mirrored their personalities and focused on issues relevant to their lives and times. Unlike the post-war writers, the poets of the New York School used direct language, everyday influences, pop culture, and humor in their pieces. Much of their writing feels quick, authentic, light, observational, and immediate. The New York School is often divided into two groups, referred to as generations.

New York School Poets: First Generation

The poets of the New York School found their center and gathered after World War II during a major social and political shift. Often described as Avante-Garde, the New York School poets forged their way using art as inspiration and became part of the Post-Modernist movement.

Frank O'Hara

Often cited as the central figure of the New York School poets, Frank O'Hara (1926-1966) was a writer, poet, art critic, and curator at the Museum of Modern Art. Much of his work reads as a sort of diary. Poems often following a stream-of-consciousness form feel immediate and intensely personal. O'Hara drew inspiration from the world around him, including jazz, action painting, surrealism, the city of New York, experiences with his friends, and his travels. Frank O'Hara's career, life, and influence on the literary and artistic world were cut short when he died tragically while on vacation after being hit by a vehicle.

Fig. 1 - American poet Frank O'Hara was a central figure in the New York School.

John Ashbery

John Lawrence Ashbery (1917-2017) had a long and rewarding career as one of the most influential poets of his time. Like O'Hara, Ashbery's interest and expertise in art substantially impacted his writing and style. He used elements commonly found in painting to guide the shape of his poetry and often found joy in being abstract. He used words with multiple meanings and invited the reader to give meaning to the poem. Writers such as W. H. Auden and Dylan Thomas influenced him. Ashbery attended school with Robert Creeley, a prominent figure of the Black Mountain Poets. Ashbery suffered the loss of his brother when they were children, and his later writings often dealt with the theme of death. His writing is reflective, reflexive, and somewhat narrative.

Fig. 2 - Poet John Ashbery speaks at the Brooklyn Book Festival in 2010.

Barbara Guest

Barbara Anne Guest (1920-2006) was an American poet who published more than 15 collections of poetry during her impressive career. As one of the members of the first generation of the New York School poets, Guest's writing was also influenced by the traits of modern art. Her early writing, while she was associated with the New York School poets, was abrupt, restless, and sophisticated. Influenced by abstract painters, much of her writing implements space as a way to draw meaning. Like Ashbery and O'Hara, Guest was part of the artist circle in New York and wrote for Art News Magazine.

James Schuyler

James Schuyler (1923-1991) was an American poet. He shared an apartment with Ashbery and O'Hara, wrote for Art News like Guest, and served as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art. His professional career in arts positioned him to forge friendships with painters Willem de Kooning, Larry Rivers, and Fairfield Porter (1907-1975). He considered a poet's mind to be an exceptional subject, and his writing was often conversational and prose-like, giving it an intimate and personal touch.

Kenneth Koch

Kenneth Koch (1925-2002) was an American playwright and poet. As part of the New York School of poets, Koch's writing explored deep emotions but utilized humor, irony, and satire to draw meaning. His poems were often casual and friendly, but reveal a writer with a deep understanding of the language and imagination.

New York School Poetry: Second Generation

The New York School of Poets' second generation included married couple Alice Notley and Ted Berrigan, Bill Berkson, Ann Waldman, Joe Brainard, and Ron Padgett. Like the generation before them, these poets were influenced by painters and retained a sense of humor throughout their works. More socially aware than the previous group, these young activists helped to establish non-academic community learning centers, such as the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church, which was running until 2012.

New York School Poetry Characteristics

While the New York School poets are a diverse group, one of their core characteristics is the strong influences from art and their highly collaborative nature. Other New York School poetry characteristics include, but are not limited to:

• The use of humor
• The inclusion of daily events and activities
• Pop culture references
• Sarcasm and irony
• Witty revelations
• Surprise ideas
• Experimentation of form
• A structure that imitates art
• Immediacy or spontaneity
• Stream-of-consciousness
• Diary-like
• Intensely personal
• Focus on individual expression

New York School of Poetry: Examples

The following examples reveal some of the characteristics and themes in work by the New York School poets.

Fig. 3 - Singer Billie Holiday, known as Lady Day, often wore gardenias in her hair while performing.

The poem "The Day Lady Died" directly references blues singing legend Billy Holiday. It recounts the day O'Hara learned of Holiday's death and his immediate reaction. This intimate and personal account is typical of the New York School poets' style. The form and structure are experimental and lack a solid rhyming pattern or meter. The poem makes the subject clear, although she is never directly mentioned by name. Finally, O'Hara's description is vivid and avoidant, as he struggles to come to terms with what her loss means to American culture and himself.

The poem "Some Trees" reveals Ashbery's tendency to play with the dual meaning of words and use abstract ideas. Like the artists he admired, Ashbery uses his words as brushstrokes to create a world where trees can be just trees or something more. Although the title implies the subject of trees, the poem purposefully avoids a direct reference to trees at the onset. In this manner, the first line can describe trees, people, or even experiences. Purposefully vague, the poem leaves interpretation open to the reader.