Frank O'Hara

Author profile

born

June 27, 1926 in Baltimore, Maryland, The United States

died

July 25, 1966

gender

male

website

http://www.frankohara.org/

genre

Poetry, Arts & Photography

influences

Arthur Rimbaud, Stephane Mallarmé, Boris Pasternak, Vladimir Mayakovsk...more

About this author

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Frank O'Hara was born in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up in Grafton, Massachusetts. 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. 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).

While at Harvard, O'Hara met John Ashbery and began publishing poems in the Ha...more Frank O'Hara was born in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up in Grafton, Massachusetts. 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. 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).

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. 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.(less)

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Books by Frank O'Hara

Average rating: 4.36 · 4,722 ratings · 275 reviews · 41 distinct works

	Lunch Poems 4.33 avg rating — 1,765 ratings — published 1964	My rating:
	The Collected Poems by Frank O'Hara, Donald Merriam Allen (Editor), Allen Donald (Editor) 4.46 avg rating — 1,501 ratings — published 1971 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Meditations in an Emergency 4.21 avg rating — 602 ratings — 2 editions	My rating:
	Selected Poems 4.48 avg rating — 324 ratings — 8 editions	My rating:
	Poems Retrieved 4.13 avg rating — 123 ratings — published 1977 — 2 editions	My rating:
	In Memory of My Feelings 4.70 avg rating — 37 ratings — published 1967 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Voice of the Poet: Frank O'Hara 4.47 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 2004	My rating:
	Frank O'Hara: Poems from the Tibor De Nagy Editions, 1952-1956 4.38 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 2006	My rating:
	Hymns of St. Bridget and Other Writings by Frank O'Hara, Bill Berkson 4.15 avg rating — 13 ratings	My rating:
	Art Chronicles, 1954-1966 3.93 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 1975 — 2 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by Frank O'Hara

“After the first glass of vodka
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
of matches is purple and brown and is called La Petite and comes from Sweden
for they are words that you know and that is all you know words not their feelings or what they mean and you write because you know them not because you understand them because you don't you are stupid and lazy and will never be great but you do what you know because what else is there?”
― Frank O'Hara, The Collected Poems

tags: drinking , matches , poetry , vodka , writing

122 people liked it

“Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

89 people liked it

“My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

tags: poetry , trust

79 people liked it

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Topics Mentioning This Author

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Frank O'Hara

Author profile

combine editionsBooks by Frank O'Hara

Quotes by Frank O'Hara

Topics Mentioning This Author

combine editions
Books by Frank O'Hara