The New York School (synonymous with abstract expressionist painting) was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s in New York City. The poets, painters, composers, dancers, and musicians often drew inspiration from Surrealism and the contemporary avant-garde art movements, in particular action painting, abstract expressionism, Jazz, improvisational theater, avant-garde music, and the interaction of friends in the New York City art world's vanguard circle.==The Poets== Concerning the New York School poets, critics argued that their work was a reaction to the Confessionalist movement in contemporary poetry. Their poetic subject matter was often light, violent, or observational, while their writing style was often described as cosmopolitan and world-traveled. The poets often wrote in a direct, and immediate, spontaneous, manner reminiscent of word/paintings, and stream of consciousness writing, often using vivid, and visual imagery. They drew on inspiration from Surrealism and the contemporary avant-garde art movements, in particular the action painting of their friends in the New York City art world circle like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.
   Poets most often associated with the New York School are John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara, Bernadette Mayer, Alice Notley, Michael Andre, Barbara Guest, Kenward Elmslie, Ron Padgett, James Schuyler, and Sam Abrams.
   O'Hara was at the center of the group before his death in 1966. His numerous friendships and post as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, he provided connections between the poets and painters like Jane Freilicher, Fairfield Porter and Larry Rivers (also his lover). There were many joint works and collaborations: Rivers inspired a play by Koch, Koch and Ashbery together wrote the poem "A Postcard to Popeye", Ashbery and Schuyler wrote the novel A Nest of Ninnies, and Schuyler collaborated on an ode with O'Hara, whose portrait was painted by Rivers.
   Although they admired each other, the poets Koch, O'Hara, Schuyler and Ashbery were quite different as poets, yet they'd much in common personally:

• Except for Schuyler, all overlapped at Harvard,
• Except for Ashbery, all did military service,
• Except for Koch, all reviewed art
• Except for Ashbery, who soon moved to Paris, all lived in New York during their formative years as poets.