Knowra Frank O’Hara Frank O’Hara Frank O’Hara was an American poet, art critic, and museum curator associated with the New York School. His conversational poems often draw on city life, art, friendship, and immediate experience.
New York School : A loose group of mid-century New York poets associated with experimental writing and close ties to visual art. O’Hara was one of its central poets, sharing its downtown setting and artistic networks.
Lunch Poems : A 1964 collection of O’Hara poems, many written during his lunch breaks in Manhattan. The collection is the clearest entry into his quick, city-bound poetic voice.
John Ashbery : An American poet associated with the New York School, known for syntactically fluid and elusive poems. He was O’Hara’s fellow New York School poet and a close contemporary.
Harvard University : A private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, founded in 1636. O’Hara studied there after military service and developed lasting literary friendships.
New York School of painting : A group of postwar American painters centered in New York and associated with abstract expressionism. O’Hara’s criticism and friendships helped connect the poetry scene to these painters.
Personism : A poetics O’Hara described in 1959 that treats a poem as a direct address between people. It names the intimate, conversational quality O’Hara cultivated in his poems.
Meditations in an Emergency : Frank O’Hara’s 1957 poetry collection, including the sequence that gives the book its title. Its poems join personal urgency to the direct address and urban immediacy associated with O’Hara.
Kenneth Koch : An American poet and playwright associated with the New York School of poetry. He shared O’Hara’s poetic circle and helped establish the group’s distinctive presence.
Museum of Modern Art : A museum in New York City devoted to modern and contemporary art. O’Hara worked there as a curator, placing his art criticism within a major museum.
Poetry and everyday life : A poetic approach that uses ordinary activities, speech, and experience as material for poems. O’Hara made lunches, errands, and social encounters central subjects of ambitious poetry.
Show all 27