New York School Literary Movement

•A group of experimental painters and a coterie of associated poets. They

lived or worked in downtown Manhattan during the 1950s and 1960s and
bonded over their shared interests, beliefs, and styles.
•The New York School is often divided into two groups, referred to as
generations.
The first generation poets of the New York School found their center and gathered after
World War II during a major social and political shift. 
The New York School of Poets' second generation are 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.
 Literary Features
• Though stylistic diversity existed within the
group, New York School poetry tended to be:
Witty
Urbane
conversational.
• They like to juxtaposition uncommon objects,
they also like to combine:
The serious with the silly
The profound with the absurd
The highly formal with the casual
 Literary Works
• First Generation
Why I Am Not a Painter by Frank O’Hara
The Day Lady Died by Frank O’Hara
Hard Times by John Ashbery
Locus Solus (alternately edited by Schuyler,
Ashbery, and Koch)
• Second Generation
Wrong Train by Ted Berrigan 
Black Arts Literary Movement
• The poets of this movement are often associated with the
members of Black Power movement who grew frustrated with
the pace of changes enacted by the civil rights movement of
1950’s and 1960’s.

• The Black Arts Movement was spurned by the assassination of

Black Nationalist Leader Malcolm X in 1965. Although the Black
Arts movement began its decline during the mid-1970s, at the
same time as the Black Power movement began its descent, it
introduced a new breed of black poets and a new brand of black
poetry.
 Literary Features
•  The three major criteria of the Black Arts
movement, established by Ron Karenga,
were that all black art must be:
Functional
Collective
Committed
• The functional nature of black art meant
that the literary work must serve a purpose
larger than merely the creation of art. 
 Literary Works
• Some of the publications in this period are:
Freedomways
Negro Digest (later renamed Black World)
The Black Scholar
The Journal of Black Poetry
Liberator
• There are also two important publishing
houses during this period:
Dudley Randall's Broadside Press in Detroit and
Madhubuti's Third World Press in Chicago