English poetry was languishing in the Fifties. The Movement poets, united by nothing more bracing than "a negative determination to avoid bad principles", seemed beset by a genteel sobriety. Their verse, in the words of Al Alvarez, was "academic, administrative ... polite, knowledgeable, efficient, polished and, in its own way, even intelligent." But it was hardly likely to inspire a new generation, or to open poetry up to insight and experience and innovation. Modernist experiment had lost its impetus. It was slowing to a sludgy stop.

But across the Atlantic, creativity was on a roll. The New York art scene, a unique foment of ideas and people, was flourishing. This was the era of Abstract Expressionism, of Jackson Pollock, of Willem de Kooning, of iconoclasm and conflict and wild improvisation. Visual art was about action and energy. It broke with convention. And the whole of culture - including poetry - was swept up by its tide.

"New York poets, except I suppose the colour blind, are affected most by the floods of paint in whose crashing surf we all scramble," wrote James Schuyler in 1959. He was one of a group of four - the others being John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara and Kenneth Koch - all of whom were, in one way or another, directly involved with the visual arts, working as critics or curators or collaborating with painters.

These four poets were not actually a group in that they never set their aims in any definitive way. How could they have? They were resolutely unacademic, unprogrammatic, unprescriptive. But were certainly stimulated by each other. "We envied each other, we emulated each other, we were almost entirely dependant on each other for support," Koch later recalled. Like the Abstract Expressionists who inspired them, they shared a common stance, though not a common style.

Now, for the first time, Carcanet gathers their work into an anthology: The New York Poets, edited by mark Ford. If the English reader wants to find out what happened to Modernism, to discover what become of the innovations of Pound or Eliot or, perhaps even more directly, where the expansiveness of Auden went, he need only flick through a few pages of this volume. They crossed the Atlantic.

... these poets belong together. Their works echo each other: they have attitude. They evoke a fresh way of thinking, a new freedom from rules as they embrace all the energy, the distraction of their era. "You can't plan on the heart" writes O'Hara, "but the better part of it, my poetry, is open."

The New York poets create on a vast empty canvas. They let the forces of poetry buffet them about. This anthology can serve only as an introduction. Just a fraction from the 500 odd poems from the collected edition of O'Hara's work can be reproduced, for example. But with a few omissions (where is Ashbery's benchmark poem 'The Tennis Court Oath'?) the editor has sought to represent them in all their diversity and daring.

The reader feels the electricity that fizzles through their lines, frazzling academic conventions, exploding grammatical rules, spitting the bright sparks that smouldered and ignited a new postmodern mindset.