Front cover image for The last avant-garde : the making of the New York School of Poets

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

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
Print Book, English, 1998
Doubleday, New York, 1998
Criticism, interpretation, etc
433 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
9780385475426, 038547542X
38595511
The pursuit of happiness
The band of rivals
John Ashbery: the picture of little J.A. in a prospect in flowers
Frank O'Hara: you just go on your nerve
Kenneth Koch: the pleasures of peace
James Schuyler: things as they are
The avant-garde rides to the rescue
The last avant-garde