Critic David Lehman has called the New York School of Poetry "the Last Avant Garde." Poet and critic Maggie Nelson suggests it might better be considered "one of the first gay avant gardes," since its original members included Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery and James Schuyler. We examine the role of women in the New York School: Barbara Guest, Alice Notley, Bernadette Mayer and Eileen Myles. How did these women pave the way for today's women poets, who, like Maggie Nelson, are conscious of gender and its effects on poetry?