Wednesday, January 21: Beginning Frank O'Hara

After spending a few minutes discussing John Ashbery's "Litany," we'll start our four-class investigation of the life and work of Frank O'Hara — who served as the social hub of the New York School's first and second generations, and was also the group's first (and perhaps most tragic) loss, when he died senselessly in the summer of 1966.

Despite a shortened writing life, O'Hara still managed a prodigious literary output, and if you think that The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara is big enough, be grateful that I didn't assign its companion volume, Poems Retrieved, which consists of all poems that hadn't yet been discovered when Donald Allen was putting together the Collected. As you'll quickly sense from reading O'Hara, his work has a immediate and occasional quality to it — his best-known single volume, Lunch Poems, is just that: poems he composed while taking a walk through New York's streets on his lunch hour, whether they were scribbled on an envelope or paper napkin, or typed out on a demonstration typewriter outside of a department store. As a result, a lot of O'Hara poems were found in drawers, coat pockets, letters to friends, etc. and no one can guess how many were lost over the years.

Over the next four classes, we'll be reading the best of what's survived. Since we have a long holiday weekend, I'll be front-loading our discussion with a few background readings. Also, since O'Hara recordings are somewhat scarce, I'll be posting them all in a separate thread. All readings are in The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara, except for the Lehman. It's also worth noting that a great many O'Hara poems have the simple title, "Poem," and so it's customary to refer to each work by the title as well as its first line:


Wednesday, January 21st

• David Lehman, "Frank O'Hara: you just go on your nerve" (164)
  
• Donald M. Allen, "Editor's Note" (v)
• John Ashbery, "Introduction" (vii)
• "A Short Chronology" (xiii)

• Autobiographia Literaria (11)
• Poem ("The eager note on my door said 'Call me,") (14)
• Today (15)
• Memorial Day 1950 (17)
• Night Thoughts in Greenwich Village (38)
• The Critic (48)
• Poetry (49)
• A Terrestrial Cuckoo (62)

Friday, January 23rd

• "Personism: A Manifesto" (498)
• "Statement for The New American Poetry" (500)

• A City Winter (75)
• An Abortion (80)
• Chez Jane (102)
• Blocks (108)
• 3rd Avenue El (130)
• On Rachmaninoff's Birthday (159)
• On Rachmaninoff's Birthday (189)
• On Rachmaninoff's Birthday (190)
• Meditations in an Emergency (197)
• To the Harbormaster (217)
• At the Old Place (223)

Monday, January 26th

• Homosexuality (181)
• To the Film Industry in Crisis (232)
• Sleeping on the Wing (235)
• Cambridge (239)
• In Memory of My Feelings (252)
• A Step Away From Them (256)
• Why I Am Not a Painter (261)
• Ode to Joy (281)
• Poem ("I live above a dyke bar and I'm happy.") (286)
• A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island (306)
• [The Sad Thing About Life Is] (323)
• The Day Lady Died (325)
• Rhapsody (325)
  
• You Are Gorgeous and I'm Coming (331)

Wednesday, January 28th

• Poem ("Hate is only one of many responses") (333)
• Personal Poem (335)
• Naphtha (337)
• Poem ("Krushchev is coming on the right day!") (340)
• Poem ("Light clarity avocado salad in the morning") (350)
• Having a Coke with You (360)
• Ave Maria (371)
• Cornkind (387)
  
• On a Birthday of Kenneth's (396)
• Mary Desti's Ass (401)
• Poem ("Lana Turner has collapsed!") (449)
• Lines for the Fortune Cookies (465)