New York

School
 Definition:
The New York School is a group of forward-thinking
and experimental painters and poets with shared interests.
They lived or worked in downtown Manhattan during the
1950s and 1960s and bonded over their shared interests,
beliefs, and styles.
 History:
The phrase New York School is an umbrella term applied
to the loose knit group of 20th century artists. A group of five
experimental poets and friends began their career during the
1950’s and 1960’s in New York (Manhattan) and closely
associated with a number of experimental painters. The poets
has no programmed or manifesto, and they embraced a range
of forms and styles. They are unified by their avantgarde
sensibilities. Their inspiration were derived from surrealism and
modernism.
Characteristics:
 The use of humor
 The inclusion of daily
events and activities
 Pop culture references
 Sarcasm and irony
 Witty revelations
 Surprise ideas
 Experimentation of form
Characteristics:
 A structure that imitates art
 Immediacy or spontaneity
 Stream-of-consciousness
 Diary-like
 Intensely personal
 Focus on individual expression
Poets:
The New York School is often divided
into two groups, referred to as
generations.
New York School Poets: First Generation

John Ashbery Barbara Guest James Schuyler

Kenneth Koch Frank O’Hara

New York School Poets: Second Generation

Alice Notley Ted Berrigan

Ron Padget Bill Berkson

Example of writings:
AVE MARIA by Frank O’ Hara
Mothers of America let your kids go to the movies!
get them out of the house so they won’t know what you’re up to
it’s true that fresh air is good for the body but what about the soul that
grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images

and when you grow old as

grow old you must

they won’t hate you they won’t criticize you they won’t know
they’ll be in some glamorous country they first saw on a Saturday
afternoon or playing hockey
ey will know where candy bars come from and gratuitous bags of popcorn as
gratuitous as leaving the movie before it’s over with a pleasant stranger whose
apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg. near the Williamsburg Bridge oh
mothers you will have made the little tykes
The Black Arts Movement
Definition:
 referred to as ‘the artistic sister of the
Black Power Movement
 single most controversial moment in the
history of African-American literature—
possibly in American literature as a
whole.
 The Black Arts movement was one of the
only American literary movements to
merge art with a political agenda.
 History:
The Black Arts Movement is usually dated from
approximately 1960 to 1970. Both the Black
Power and Black Arts movements were responses
to the turbulent socio-political landscape of the
time. The Black Arts and the Black Power concept
both related broadly to the Afro-American’s
desire for self-determination and nationhood.”
The artists within the Black Arts Movement
sought to create politically engaged work that
explored the African American cultural and
historical experience and transformed the way
African Americans were portrayed in literature
and the arts.
Characteristics:
 functional
 collective and
 committed
Significant figures:

Amiri Baraka (formerly, LeRoi Jones).

AMIRI BARAKA
Baraka began his career among the Beats, living in Greenwich
Village and associating with poets such as Allen Ginsberg, Charles
Olson, and Gary Snyder. Following the assassination of Malcolm X in
1965, Baraka made a symbolic move from Manhattan’s Lower East
Side to Harlem, where he founded the Black Arts Repertory
Theatre/School.
According to the Norton Anthology of African American
Literature, “No one was more competent in [the] combination of the
experimental and the vernacular than Amiri Baraka, whose volume
Black Magic Poetry 1961–1967 (The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1969) is one of
the finest products of the African Ameriwcan creative energies of the
1960s.” Baraka also became known for his play Dutchman, a shocking
one-act that was charged with symbolism and a radical Black
consciousness.
 Example of writing:
Black Art By: Amiri Baraka
Poems are bullshit unless they are teeth or trees or lemon sped name. Or
black ladies dying of men leaving nickel berts beating them down. Fuck pos
and they are useful, wd they shoot come at you, love what you are, breathe
like wrestlers, or shudder strangely after pissing. We want live words of the
hip world live flesh & coursing blood Hearts Brains Souls splintering fire. We
want pos like fists beating niggers out of Jocks er dagger poems in the slimy
bellies of the owner jews Back posto mear on girdlemamma mulattbitches
whose brains are red jelly stuck between Tabeth taylor's taking Whores we
want
 "poems that kill Assassin poems Poems that shoot guns. Pons that wrestle
cops into alleys and take their weapons leaving them dead with tongues
pulled out and sent to Ireland. Knockoff poems for dope selling wops or slick
hallwhite politicians Airplane poems, …………………………. Setting fee and
death to whites ass. Look at the Liberal Spokesman for the jews clutch his
throat & puke himself in eternity. There's a negroleader penned to abar stool
in Sardi's eyeballs melting kneeling between the sheriff's thighs gotiating
coolly for his people. Aggh... stumbles across the room Put it on him pon
Strip hem naked to the world! Another bad poem cracking steel knuckles
is a jewlady's mouth Poem scream poison gas on beasts in green beret Let there be
to love poem written until love can exist freely and clearly. Let Mack people
understand that they are the lovers and the son of warriors and of warriors Are
poems & poets & all the leveliness here in the world We want a black poem. And
Let the world be a Black P And Let All Black People Speak This Po