Frank O'Hara

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Russell "Frank" O'Hara (March 27, 1926-July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic.

O'Hara made a name for himself in New York City's cultural scene thanks to his work as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art.

O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure in the New York School, a loose group of artists, writers, and musicians who were inspired by jazz, surrealism, abstract expressionism, action painting, and contemporary avant-garde art movements. O'Hara's poetry is personal in style and content, and has been described as "like entries in a diary" when it is read.

O'Hara's poetry, according to poet and commentator Mark Doty, is "urbane, ironic, occasionally celebratory, and often wildly amusing" containing "information and connections beyond academic verse," such as "the camp icons of movie stars of the twenties and thirties, the daily life in Manhattan, jazz music, and phone calls from friends.

O'Hara's poetry attempted to capture the immediacy of life, with the conviction that poetry should be shared "between two people rather than two pages." "The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara (1971), the first of many posthumous collections, was published in the 1972 National Book Award for Poetry."

Early life and education

Frank O'Hara, the son of Russell Joseph O'Hara and Katherine (née Broderick), was born on March 27, 1926, Baltimore, and grew up in Grafton, Massachusetts. He attended St. John's High School. He grew up believing he had been born in June but in fact had been born in March - his parents disguised his true date of birth because he was born out of wedlock. He studied piano at the New England Conservatory in Boston from 1941 to 1944 and served in the United States Navy in the South Pacific and Japan as a sonarman on the destroyer USS Nicholas during World War II.

With the funds available to veterans, he attended Harvard University, where poet and writer Edward Gorey was his roommate. O'Hara's first passion, however, was heavily influenced by experimental art and contemporary music, and it would surprise new couples by visiting swaths of Rachmaninoff (or else). Pierre Reverdy, Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, Boris Pasternak, Boris Pasternak, and Vladimir Mayakovsky were among his favorite writers. While at Harvard, O'Hara met John Ashbery and began writing poems in the Harvard Advocate. Despite his love of music, O'Hara resigned from Harvard in 1950 and obtained a degree in English.

He later attended graduate school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He earned a Hopwood Award and earned his master's degree in English literature in 1951 while at Michigan.

Personal life

Frank O'Hara met Joe LeSueur in 1951, and the two remained close until 1965, together on and off from 1955 to 1965.

The two lived at 441 East 9th St in the East Village from 1959 to 1963. O'Hara maintained hundreds of friends and lovers throughout his life, many from the New York art and poetry worlds, and many from the New York arts and poetry worlds. Soon after arriving in New York, he was working at the Museum of Modern Art, selling postcards at the admissions desk, and began to write regularly.

In 1959, O'Hara first met longtime partner Vincent Warren. Warren, a Canadian ballet dancer, inspired several of O'Hara's poems, including "Poem (A la Recherche d'Gertrude Stein), "Les Luths"), and "Having a Coke With You" were among the entries, including "Poem (A la Recherche d'Gertrude Stein)" and "Poem" (Too many echoes in my head). Warren died on October 25, 2017, 51 years since O'Hara's demise.

O'Hara was struck by a jeep on the Fire Island beach in the early mornings of July 24, 1966, after the beach taxi with a group of friends stopped in the dark. He died after a ruptured liver at Bayview Hospital in Mastic Beach, Long Island, the next day. Attempts to sue negligent homicide charges against 23-year-old driver Kenneth L. Ruzicka were unsuccessful; many of O'Hara's friends believed the local police had launched a lax probe to shield one of their own locals. On Long Island, O'Hara was buried in Green River Cemetery. Larry Rivers, a long-time friend and lover, wrote one of the eulogies, as well as Bill Berkson, Edwin Denby, and René d'Harnoncourt.

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Early career

In the autumn of 1951, O'Hara moved into an apartment in New York City with Joe LeSueur, who was his roommate and sometime lover for the next 11 years. It was during this time that he began teaching at The New School.

O'Hara was active in the art world, working as a reviewer for ARTnews, and in 1960 was assistant curator of painting and sculpture exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art. He was a friend of the artists Norman Bluhm, Mike Goldberg, Grace Hartigan, Alex Katz, Willem de Kooning, Joan Mitchell, and Larry Rivers.

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