Frank O'Hara
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Francis Russell O'Hara (June 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American poet who, along with John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch, was a key member of what was known as the New York School of poetry.
Life
Frank O'Hara, the son of Russell Joseph O'Hara and Katherine Broderick, was born in Baltimore and grew up in Massachusetts. He studied piano at the New England Conservatory in Boston from 1941 to 1944. O'Hara served in the South Pacific and Japan as a sonarsman on the destroyer USS Nicholas during World War II.
He attended Harvard, where he roomed with artist Edward Gorey. At Harvard he had majored in music and did some composing. While he also wrote poetry, he was more influenced by contemporary music, which was his first love, and visual art. He did have favorite poets: Arthur Rimbaud, Stephane Mallarmé, Boris Pasternak, and Vladimir Mayakovsky. While at Harvard, O'Hara met John Ashbery and began publishing poems in the Harvard Advocate. Despite his love for music, O'Hara changed his major and left Harvard in 1950 with a degree in English.
He then attended graduate school at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and received his M.A. in 1951. That autumn O'Hara moved into an apartment in New York City. He was soon employed at the front desk of the Museum of Modern Art and began to write seriously.
O'Hara was active in the art world, working as a reviewer for Art News and in 1960 was made Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture Exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art. He was also friends with artists like Willem de Kooning, Larry Rivers, and Bill Berkson. O'Hara died in an accident on Fire Island in 1966. He was run over by a dune buggy while on the beach late at night with friends, and died at age 40.
He is buried in Springs Cemetery on Long Island.
Work
O'Hara's early work was considered both provocative and provoking. His work was immediate and was often quickly typed out, a point critics have consistently pointed out. One collection, Lunch Poems was so named because he typed them up on his lunch hour. Low and high cultural references mingle easily in his poems, with dreamlike lyricism. His most anthologized poems are "Why I Am Not a Painter" and "The Day Lady Died," about singer Billie Holiday. O'Hara was notoriously disorganized. A legend states that before publishing O'Hara's poems City Lights publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti had to fly from San Francisco to New York and search through all of O'Hara's coat pockets to find them. It is unknown how many poems may have been lost. In 1952 his first volume of poetry, A City in Winter, attracted favorable attention; his essays on painting and sculpture and his reviews for ArtNews were considered brilliant. O'Hara became one of the most distinguished members of the New York School of poets, which also included Ashbery, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch. O'Hara's association with the painters Jackson Pollock, and Jasper Johns, also leaders of the New York School, became a source of inspiration for his highly original poetry. He attempted to produce with words the effects these artists had created on canvas. In certain instances, he collaborated with the painters to make "poem-paintings," paintings with word texts. O'Hara's most original volumes of verse, Meditations in an Emergency (1956) and Lunch Poems (1964), are impromptu lyrics, a jumble of witty talk, journalistic parodies, and surrealist imagery.
Bibliography
Books in Lifetime
- A City Winter and Other Poems. Two Drawings by Larry Rivers. (New York: Tibor de Nagy Gallery Editions, 1951 [sic, i.e. 1952])
- Oranges: 12 pastorals. (New York: Tibor de Nagy Gallery Editions, 1953; New York: Angel Hair Books, 1969)
- Meditations in an Emergency. (New York: Grove Press, 1957; 1967)
- Second Avenue. Cover drawing by Larry Rivers. (New York: Totem Press in Association with Corinth Books, 1960)
- Odes. Prints by Michael Goldberg. (New York: Tiber Press, 1960)
- Lunch Poems. (San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, The Pocket Poets Series (No. 19), 1964)
- Love Poems (Tentative Title). (New York: Tibor de Nagy Gallery Editions, 1965)
Minor Works
- "Hartigan and Rivers with O'Hara." (1 folded sheet, 10 p.) by Frank O'Hara, Grace Hartigan, and Larry Rivers from "An Exhibition of Pictures with Poems by Frank O'Hara . . . November 24 through December 24, 1959" (New York: Tibor de Nagy Gallery, 1959)
- "A Cordial Invitation to Celebrate The Sixtieth Birthday of Edwin Denby at a Dinner to be Given By His Friends. Friday March 15, 1963 . . .. with "Edwin's Hand" by Frank O'Hara (1963)
- Belgrade, November 19, 1963. (New York: Adventures in Poetry)
- Audit/Poetry. Vol. IV, No.1 "Featuring Frank O'Hara" (Buffalo, NY at 180 Winspear Avenue, 1964)
- "New Paintings" by Michael Goldberg (New York: Martha Jackson Gallery, 1966) with "Why I Am Not A Painter" by Frank O'Hara on front cover dated 1956
- Hotel particulier. (broadside) (Pleasant Valley, NY: Kriya Press, 1967)
- Two Pieces. (London: Long Hair Books, series one, 1969) includes "THOSE WHO ARE DREAMING, a play about St. Paul" and "COMMERCIAL VARIATIONS" dated 4/52)
- The End Of The Far West: 11 Poems. (New York by Ted Berrigan, 1974)
- Hymns of St. Bridget. by Bill Berkson and Frank O'Hara (New York: Adventures in Poetry, 1974)
- Macaroni. (broadside, includes "In Memoriam" by Patsy Southgate) (Calais, VT: Z Press, 1974)
- Down at the box-office. (broadside) (Bolinas, Calif: Yanagi, 1977)
Exhibitions
- Jackson Pollock. (New York: George Braziller, Inc. 1959)
- New Spanish painting and sculpture. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1960)
- Robert Motherwell: with selections from the artist's writings. by Frank O'Hara (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1965)
- Nakian. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1966)
- Art Chronicles, 1954-1966. (New York: G. Braziller, 1975)
On O'Hara
- The Poets of the New York School by John Bernard Myers (Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania, 1969)
- Frank O'Hara: Poet Among Painters by Marjorie Perloff (New York: G. Braziller, 1977; 1st paperback ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979; Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, with a new introduction, 1998)
- Frank O'Hara by Alan Feldman (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979 . . . frontispiece photo of Frank O'Hara c. by Richard Moore)
- Frank O'Hara: A Comprehensive Bibliography by Alexander Smith, Jr. (New York: Garland, 1979; 2nd print. corrected, 1980)
- Homage to Frank O'Hara. edited by Bill Berkson and Joe LeSueur, cover by Jane Freilicher (originally published as Big Sky 11/12 in April, 1978; rev. ed. Berkeley: Creative Arts Book Company, 1980)
- Art with the touch of a poet: Frank O'Hara. exhibit companion compiled by Hildegard Cummings (Storrs, Conn. : The William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, 1983 . . . January 24-March 13, 1983)
- Frank O'Hara: To Be True To A City edited by Jim Elledge (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990)
- Statutes of Liberty: The New York School of Poets. by Geoff Ward (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993)
- City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara by Brad Gooch (1st ed. New York: Knopf, 1993; New York: HarperPerennial, 1994)
- Hyperscapes in the Poetry of Frank O'Hara: Difference, Homosexuality, Topography by Hazel Smith (Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, 2000)
External links
- [frankohara.org] (official home page)
- [FrankOHara.com] (unofficial home page)
- Articles on Frank O'Hara at Poetry X [link] [link] [link]
- [Modern American Poetry]
- [Crossroads: Tribute to Frank O'Hara]
- [Poems by Frank O'Hara]
- [Review of O’Hara’s Why I Am Not A Painter]
- [Critique of O'Hara's poetry]
- [Academy of American Poets]
- [Jacket Magazine's Frank O'Hara feature]
- [Frank O'Hara Directory and Selected Poems]
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