The last avant-garde : the making of the New York School of Poets

Summary: The Last Avant-Garde is a richly detailed portrait of one of the most significant movements in American arts and letters. Covering the years 1948 to 1966, the book focuses on four fast friends - John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler - the poets at the center of the New York School. They were both acolytes and catalysts. Enthralled with the bold experiments of painters like Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, each came to New York filled with the ideas that would revolutionize poetry and greatly influence writers, visual artists, musicians, and composers up to the present day. Lehman brings to life the exhilarating creative ferment of the time and place, the relationship of great friendship to great art, and the powerful influence a group of visual artists, especially Jane Freilicher, Larry Rivers, and Fairfield Porter, had on the literary efforts of the New York School.