Frank O'Hara Poetry Page

Frank O'Hara was born in Baltimore in 1926 and raised in
Massachusetts. After service in the navy he studied at Harvard
and the University of Michigan, then moved to New York as soon as
he could. "I can't even enjoy a blade of grass," he once
wrote "unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or
some other sign that people do not totally regret life." From 1952
until his death in 1966 (he was run down by a dune buggy on Fire
Island), O'Hara was on the staff at the Museum of Modern Art. He
was active in the art scene (most notably with the abstract
expressionist painters), continued as a playwright and critic, and
was the epicenter of a circle of poets that came to be called the
New York School. These poets included John Ashbury, Kenneth Koch,
and James Schuyler, who derived inspiration from paintings by
Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and others.

In an essay entitled "Personism: A Manifesto," O'Hara sheds
some light on his views towards poetry, declaring that "Nobody
should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need
poetry bully for them." In essence, O'Hara wanted poetry to be a
personal, spur-of-the-moment spontaneity in which abstraction is
ruled out in favor of an expression of the artist's personal voice
or style. Consequently, many of his poems were composed during
spare moments. Most, in fact, were left around his apartment or
sent in letters to friends. O'Hara published six books of poetry
from 1952 until his death.

I was first drawn to O'Hara's poetry when I read "Why I Am Not a
Painter" which was the first poem by him that I had ever read. His
ideas and reasoning in that poem are unique adn make the reader
thinks about what he is saying. Because some of his poems
are so different he never uses common or general themes in
them. O'Hara also has no particular pattern he follows in all
his poems. His separation between stanzas, if he uses any, is
equal throughout a poem, but does not separate different ideas
or sentences.