Frank O'Hara

Infobox Writer
Frank O'Hara

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imagesize = 106px
birthdate = birth date|1926|6|27|=mf=y
birthplace = Baltimore, Maryland
deathdate = death date and age|1966|7|25|1926|3|27|mf=y
deathdate = Fire Island, New York (Car Accident)
occupation = Poet, Art Curator, Art Critic, Playwright
nationality = American
influences =Arthur Rimbaud, Stephane Mallarmé, Boris Pasternak, John Ashbery,Edward Field

Francis Russell O'Hara (June 27, 1926– July 25, 1966) was an American poet who, along with John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Barbara Guest 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 at Maryland General Hospital, Baltimore and grew up in Grafton, Massachusetts. He attended St. John's High School in Worcester. 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 sonarman on the destroyer USS "Nicholas" during World War II.

With the funding made available to veterans he attended Harvard University, where he roomed with artist/writer Edward Gorey. Although he majored in music and did some composing, his attendance was irregular and his interests disparate. He regularly attended classes in philosophy and theology, while writing impulsively in his spare time. O'Hara was heavily influenced by visual art, and by contemporary music, which was his first love (he remained a fine piano player all his life and would often shock new partners by suddenly playing swathes of Rachmaninoff when visiting them). 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 graduated from Harvard in 1950 with a degree in English.

He then attended graduate school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. While at Michigan, he won a Hopwood Award and received his M.A. in English literature 1951. That autumn O'Hara moved into an apartment in New York City with Joe LeSueur, who would be his roommate and sometimes his lover for the next 11 years.citation |title=Joe: A Memoir of Joe Brainard |first=Ron |last=Padgett |publisher=Coffee House Press |year=2004 |isbn=1566891590 |chapter=Joe LeSueur & Frank O'Hara |page=64 ] Known throughout his life for his extreme sociability, passion, and warmth, O'Hara had hundreds of friends and lovers throughout his life, many from the New York art and poetry worlds. Soon after arriving in New York, he was 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, Norman Bluhm, Larry Rivers and Joan Mitchell. O'Hara died in an accident on Fire Island in which he was struck and seriously injured by a man speeding in a beach vehicle during the early morning hours of July 24, 1966. He died the next day of a ruptured liver at the age of 40 and was buried in the Green River Cemetery on Long Island.

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] )g
* "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)

Posthumous works

* "In Memory of My Feelings", commemorative volume illustrated by 30 U.S. artists and edited by Bill Berkson (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1967)
* "The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara". edited by Donald Allen with an introduction by John Ashbery (1st ed. New York: Knopf, 1971; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)
* "The Selected Poems of Frank O'Hara". edited by Donald Allen (New York: Knopf, 1974; Vintage Books, 1974)
* "Standing Still and Walking in New York". edited by Donald Allen (Bolinas, Calif: Grey Fox Press; Berkeley, Calif: distributed by Book People, 1975)
* "Early Writing". edited by Donald Allen (Bolinas, Calif: Grey Fox; Berkeley: distributed by Book People, 1977)
* "Poems Retrieved". edited by Donald Allen (Bolinas, Calif: Grey Fox Press; Berkeley, Calif: distributed by Book People, 1977)
* "Selected Plays". edited by Ron Padgett, Joan Simon, and Anne Waldman (1st ed. New York: Full Court Press, 1978)
* "Amorous Nightmares of Delay: Selected Plays". (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997)
* "Selected Poems", edited by Mark Ford (New York: Knopf, 2008)

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

* "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)
* "City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara" by Brad Gooch (1st ed. New York: Knopf, 1993; New York: HarperPerennial, 1994)
* "In Memory of My Feelings: Frank O'Hara and American Art" by Russell Ferguson (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles / University of California Press, 1999)
* "Hyperscapes in the Poetry of Frank O'Hara: Difference, Homosexuality, Topography" by Hazel Smith (Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, 2000)
* "Digressions on Some Poems by Frank O'Hara" by Joe LeSueur (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003).
* "Frank O'Hara: The Poetics of Coterie" by Lytle Shaw (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2006)

References

External links

* [http://www.frankohara.org/ frankohara.org] (official home page)
* [http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/164 Academy of American Poets]
* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7598269 Frank O'Hara's Photo & Gravesite]
* [http://www.kerouacalley.com/ohara.html Frank O'Hara @ Kerouac Alley]