Author: Frank O’ Hara
Profile: Frank O’Hara was an American poet, writer and art critic or curator. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland and died in Fire Island, New York, U.S. He completed his B.A. in 1950 at Harvard University and M.A. in English Literature in 1951 at the University of Michigan.
He was the pioneer of The New York School, literary movement. He gained importance in the art world of New York City, because of his employment as curator at the Museum of Modern Art. In the New York School, he is considered to be a leading figure where an informal group of musicians, writers and artists have drawn inspiration from action painting, jazz, abstract expressionism, surrealism and contemporary avant-garde art movements. As far as content and tone is concerned, Frank’s poetry is personal and has been described as sounding like ‘entries in a diary’. His poetry has also been described as at time genuinely celebratory, ironic, urbane and very often wildly funny consisting material and associations foreign to academic verse. Immediacy of life, feeling that poetry should be between two persons instead of two pages is captured in O’Hara’s writings. Frank attended St.John’s High School. Born out of wedlock his parents always tried to hide his real date of birth. From 1941 to 1944 he studied piano at the New England Conservatory in Boston. He also served in Japan and the South Pacific a sonarman during World War II on the destroyer USS Nicholas.
Writing style: Frank O’ Hara’s genre is American poetry.
Published Texts:
Bibliography
Works by Frank O’Hara at Open Library
Works by or about Frank O’Hara in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
Books
1951 – A City Winter and Other Poems. Two Drawings by Larry Rivers.
1953 – Oranges: 12 pastorals
1957 – Meditations in an Emergency
1960 – Second Avenue. Cover drawing by Larry Rivers
1960 – Odes. Prints by Michael Goldberg
1964 – Lunch Poems
1965 – Love Poems (Tentative Title)
Posthumous works
1967 – In Memory of My Feelings
1971 – The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara
1974 – The Selected Poems of Frank O’Hara
1975 – Standing Still and Walking in New York
1977 – Early Writing
1977 – Poems Retrieved
1978 – Selected Plays
1997 – Amorous Nightmares of Delay: Selected Plays
2013 – Selected Poems
2013 – Poems Retrieved
2014 – Lunch Poems
Exhibitions
1959 – Jackson Pollock (New York: George Braziller, Inc.)
1960 – New Spanish painting and sculpture (New York: The Museum of Modern Art)
1965 – Robert Motherwell: with selections from the artist’s writings. By Frank O’Hara (New York: The Museum of Modern Art)
1966 – Nakian (New York: The Museum of Modern Art)
1975 – Art Chronicles, 1954-1966 (New York: G. Braziller)
’Hara’s works have influenced Frankie Cosmos’s music
A 1973 chamber ensemble work by Morton Feldman, the American composer, is ‘For Frank O’Hara’
O’Hara’s poem has been used in 2014 as sampling by Irish artist Davit Kitt on the release of ‘Having a Coke with You’
In films
In ‘Beastly’ the 2011 film the love-struck main characters read ‘Having a Coke with You’, O’Hara’s poem, aloud to each other
In literature
In William Boyd’s 2002 novel, ‘Any Human Heart’, O’Hara is a minor character
The basis of Paul Legault’s Lunch Poems 2, is O’Hara’s Lunch Poems
In television
In the season 1 episode of the HBO series Bored to Death, ‘The Case of the Missing Screenplay’ the main character loses a screenplay written by Jim Jarmusch about the life of Frank O’Hara
O’Hara’s poetry collection, Meditations in an Emergency has reference in many episodes of Mad Men (season 2)
In the final episode of ‘Normal People’ based on Sally Rooney’s eponymous novel, Marianne is offered a book of Frank O’Hara poetry by Connell for her birthday.
In Plays
In Rachel Bond’s 2017 play At the Old Place, the poetry of Frank O’Hara is prominently featured
Landmarks
A plaque was unveiled one of O’Hara’s New York City residences on June 10, 2014