The New York School

An intimate encounter with four young poets on their way to literary fame in the legendary grit and glitter of postwar New York

"I defy readers to withstand the romance of the moment Kindley so beautifully describes and to resist the urge to relive it through the New York School Poets’ verse.” —Mary Gabriel, author of Ninth Street Women

New York immediately after World War II: Chelsea lofts were $20 a month and filled with painters; downtown crawled with young veterans and recent grads with artistic ambitions; gay and lesbian city-dwellers lived openly but were still wary of homophobic violence and legal harrassment. Amid this dazzling mix of grunge and bohemia, John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch, four young poets on the rise, found each other.

This quartet formed the core of the New York School of Poets, and they were an integral part of the city’s literary scene at the pinnacle of its prosperity and influence. All around them was a seemingly unending procession of artistic innovations: from action painting to hard bop, Beat poetry to Pop Art. They attended the same parties and exhibitions, drank in the same bars, slept with the same people. They became a collective powered by loyalty, mutual encouragement, and competition. They didn’t reject the establishment so much as they ignored it, seeking to “do something with language / That has never been done before.”

Kindley expertly guides readers through the dorm rooms, editorial offices, gay bars, Pacific war scenes, art galleries, Fire Island summer houses, and squalid Midtown apartments in which the New York School was shaped. Both nostalgic and clear-sighted, The New York School combines biography, cultural history, and literary analysis, and paints a striking group portrait of this coterie, highlighting fame and folly, competition and collaboration, and ultimately, enduring friendship.