Ashbery describes the relationship between the New York School poets and painters as almost accidental:
My arrival in New York coincided with the cresting of the “heroic” period of Abstract Expressionism, as it was later to be known, and somehow we all seemed to benefit from this strong moment even if we paid little attention to it and seemed to be going our separate ways. We were in awe of de Kooning, Pollock, Rothko and Motherwell and not too sure of exactly what they were doing.