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New York School (US)

Movement
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Postwar American poetic movement featuring urban sensibility, wit, surrealism, and ties to visual art, including O’Hara, Ashbery, and Koch.

Detailed Definition
The New York School (US) refers to an informal group of American poets active primarily in the 1950s–1970s, centered in New York City, whose work fused avant-garde aesthetics with urban sensibility, wit, and references to visual art; key figures include Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler, who embraced spontaneity, conversational diction, and a rejection of confessional intensity in favor of playful, often ironic engagement with everyday life and modernist abstraction.
Example
Example in poetry:
New York School (US) features witty, urban, conversational poetry—e.g., Frank O’Hara’s “Having a Coke with You”: “is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne.”
Additional Notes
New York School (US) 1950s-60s poets including O'Hara, Ashbery, Koch. Urban, conversational, influenced by Abstract Expressionism. Emphasized spontaneity, wit, pop culture. Contrast with Beat poets and confessionals.
Also Known As
New York poets O'Hara circle American avant-garde Manhattan school
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