A Study of the Urban Poetics of Frank O’Hara

Wang Xiaoling, Wang Yuzhi, Zheng Mingyuan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032267425
• eBook ISBN: 9781000588750
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Focusing on the poetry and cultural practice of Frank O'Hara, the great urban poet of the New York School during the 1950s and 1960s, this books explores the interwoven relationship between his urban poetics and the urban culture of New York, seeking to shed light on poetic concept and its cultural relevance.

The poetry of Frank O'Hara is deeply rooted in and nourished by his urban experience as a metropolitan and an active participant in the vibrant cultural scene of New York. Therefore, an investigation into the interactive dynamics between his poetry and the urban culture he helped shape serves as a starting point for further study on the literary representation of European and American urban culture. Across eight chapters, the authors look into the genesis, theoretical constitution, the interface with culture and aesthetics of O'Hara's urban poetics and also their philosophical foundations, literary ethics, special expression and representation as well as his reception of modernity and postmodernity.

The title will appeal to scholars, students and general readers interested in American literature, poetry and urban culture, especially Frank O'Hara and the New York School.

1 The Origin of Frank O’Hara’s Urban Poetics

Wang Xiaoling

DOI: 10.4324/9781003289791-1

During the period in which the “literary and artistic movement of Modernism” was developing both in scope and depth, the poetry circle in America was extremely active in the twentieth century, producing numerous poetic works and literary criticism on poetics, exerting a profound influence on the literary world in America, and gradually becoming the vane it relied on for direction. The New York School poetry, in particular, brought about tremendous changes in American urban poetry and culture with its revolutionary poetic experiment and innovations. Its representative poet, Frank O’Hara, evinced an inventive and diverse cultural trend, thus facilitating, more directly, a dialogue between city and poetics, and revealing the objective existence of the modern metropolitan attributes and the original humanity and spirituality of the “human beings” living in modern cities. O’Hara’s poetic writings carried more information about urban culture. By uncovering his poetic material and thrashing out his urban poetics in the “the field of integration” between culture and literature, he managed to not only reconsider issues like individuality and unitarity regarding the “self-shaping” of modern human nature but also endowed the metropolitan setting of the text with new connotations in the collision between city and poetics. Therefore, this book attempts to explore the specific texts in specific time and space, with a focus on the influence of the urban environment and urban cultural space upon O’Hara’s poetics, so as to seek a breakthrough on the study of the relevance between the concept of poetics and cultural thoughts beyond literature. First of all, to set up a feasible plan for a newly defined study of “urban poetics,” it is necessary to review the existing scholarship on O’Hara in and outside China.

1.1 Urban View: O’Hara Studies in and Outside China

1.1.1 Major Achievements in China’s O’Hara Studies

According to the article indexes reprinted in Information Center for Social Science of Renmin University (China) and Foreign Literature Review, China Journal Net CNKI Digital Library, China National Library, and other database statistics, as of June 2015, no monograph, no translation, and no doctoral dissertation has been published on the American poet Frank O’Hara in China; only two master’s theses and approximately 25 journal articles were published. In a few books and translations concerning contemporary American poetry, some chapters have comments on the poetic style and the avant-garde poetic techniques of O’Hara, a representative figure of the New York School. The status quo of O’Hara Studies in China may be summarized as follows:

First, within the field of American poetry, China’s O’Hara Studies has made some new progress, but its scope is still relatively narrow because it has been focused on general introductions to the New York School poetry and O’Hara’s poetic style. Some of the articles are noteworthy, such as A. Meng’s “Frank O’Hara and the New York School Poetry” (New Youth, 1994, No. 11) and Hou Aibo’s “New York School Poetry” (Poetry Monthly, 2008, No. 8).

Second, conducting a case study of the poet’s well-known poems has been the main accomplishment of China’s O’Hara Studies, just as Yu Pengyuan did in his master’s thesis, On Action Painting Notions in Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems (2010) and his paper, “Death Images in O’Hara’s Poem ‘A Step Away from Them’” (Anhui Literature, 2010b, No. 4).

Third, the study of the “genre” of O’Hara’s poetry and his “poetics” has been conducted and developed both in scope and depth. The consequential effect is to detect, under the “tension” of poetic design, more fresh and diverse ideological connotations in the literary essence of American poetry. Most of the research findings are presented in papers written by Wang Xiaoling in recent years, such as “Subversion and Development: Frank O’Hara’s Other Ode” (Foreign Languages Research, 2013c, No. 2), “Postmodern Poetic Style of Frank O’Hara’s Poetry” (Foreign Languages and Their Teaching, 2013b, No. 4), “Poetics of Surrealism in the Early Poems of Frank O’Hara” (Contemporary Foreign Literature, 2014c, No. 2), “‘Personism’ in O’Hara’s Urban Poetry” (Ren Wen Za Zhi 2014a, No. 11), “The Inheritance and Development of Confessional Poetry in O’Hara’s Urban Poetry” (English and American Literary Studies, 2015b, No. 22).

Fourth, the integral criticism of poetry and painting has become another hotspot in China’s O’Hara Studies. It functions well in showing how the stylistic structure of the New York School poetry could be used for extensive reference and in-depth application by other artistic genres, on the one hand, and, on the other, how these ever-changing avant-garde artistic genres could generate their cultural effect and space full of poetic implications. Here are some articles worth mentioning: Wang Junying’s “Words and Color: The Limits of Frank O’Hara’s Poetry and Painting” (Time Literature: Theory Academic Edition, 2007, No. 6), Wang Xiaoling’s “Frank O’Hara’s Literary Life: Marjorie Perloff’s Frank O’Hara, Poet Among Painters” (Foreign Literature Studies, 2010, No. 5), and “The Colorful Dream Vision of Frank O’Hara’s Urban Poetry” (English and American Literary Studies, 2012, No. 2); Ye Mei and Zhang Weidong’s translation of Helen Vendler’s “Frank O’Hara: The Virtue of Alterable” (Shanghai Culture, 2010, No. 5).

Fifth, the introduction of new research methods and creative ways of thinking, especially the deeper and more extensive dissemination of literary theories, such as aesthetic principles, existentialism, spatial theory, urban culture, and literary ethics, broadened the critical vision and interpretation in China’s O’Hara Studies and exposed, without any reservation, the current state of urban life and personal inner experience in the new era as depicted in urban poetry, a new artistic genre full of flexibilities. Here are some good examples: Hou Aibo’s Master’s Thesis, “The City Scenery of the New York Poetry School in the Consumer Era” (2009); Liu Liping’s “The Distance of Word and Thing in Frank O’Hara’s Poetry” (Journal of Chengdu Normal University, 2011a, No. 3), “‘Who Does Own Anything’: The Distance in Frank O’Hara’s Poetry” (Journal of Anqing Normal University: Social Science Edition, 2011b, No. 2); Wang Zhuo’s “Tension between Poetics and Culture: Meditations on the Aesthetics and Culture in Frank O’Hara’s Poetry” (Journal of Beijing University of Science and Technology: Social Science Edition, 2006, No. 3), “The New York School Poets and New York City Culture: A Case Study of Frank O’Hara” (Journal of University of Jinan, 2007, No. 3); Wang Yanfei’s “Interpretation of Frank O’Hara’s ‘Existence Anxiety’” (Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the Sino-American Poetry and Poetry Association, 2011, No. 9); Wang Xiaoling’s “The Interaction between O’Hara’s Poetry Composing and the City Culture of New York” (Foreign Languages and Their Teaching, 2011b, No. 1), “The Influence of French Modernist Poetics on Frank O’Hara” (Contemporary Foreign Literature, 2011a, No. 4), “New York Popular Culture in the Urban Poetry of Frank O’Hara” (Foreign Literatures, 2013a, No. 1), “The Multi-Dimensional Space in Frank O’Hara’s Urban Poetics” (Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2014d, No. 4), and “The Postmodern Morality in the Urban Poetry of Frank O’Hara” (Journal of Shanghai Normal University: Social Sciences Edition, 2015a, No. 1).

In addition, a few book chapters from monographs, known as the culminating products of research projects on contemporary American poetry and sponsored by certain research foundations, addressed the topic of “Frank O’Hara’s Poetry” and probed into the unique but complex relationship between poetic style and cultural factors in poems. Here are two examples: The fifth chapter, “The Poetics and Cultural Tension: The Study of Frank O’Hara’s Poetry,” in Wang Zhuo’s American Contemporary Poetry in the Perspective of Postmodernism (2005) and the seventh chapter, “The New York School Poetry,” in Tang Genjin’s 20th-Century American Poetry (2007).

1.1.2 Major Achievements in O’Hara Studies outside China

To clarify the latest scholarship on O’Hara at home and abroad, dwelling on a vertical comparative analysis of the research within China is not enough. Only by comparing the research in China horizontally with the research achievements outside China can we find out what is weak and inadequate in our research and, thereby, see how far we are behind the international advanced level. To this end, we chose Duke University’s journal, American Literature, as a reaction sample for the study of O’Hara’s poetry and objectively sorted through the relevant resources and academic materials from ProQuest’s PQRAL academic database for an objective overview of O’Hara Studies outside China. Here is a list of major findings in our survey:

First, some professional poetry journals and academic journals have published a large number of essays that address a certain topic concerning the New York School poet Frank O’Hara and his poems. For example, “The Veil of Accessibility,” published in American Poetry Review, explores the intertextuality, super-conscious meditation, and aesthetics in O’Hara’s poetry. There are other publications that deal with special topics or offer summarizing findings about O’Hara, including The Exploration of Secret Smiles: The Language of Art and of Homosexuality in Frank O’Hara’s Poetry edited by Alice Charlie Parker and The City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara edited by Brad Gooch.

Second, a large proportion of publications is dedicated to the relevance of O’Hara’s poetry writing to social culture. As a result, the study of O’Hara’s poetics seems to be associated more closely to the theme of the real American life today and demonstrates a range of diverse features, such as The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning edited by Dore Ashton and Statutes of Liberty: The New York School of Poets written by Geoff Ward.

Third, the application of various critical theories, such as ecological poetics, linguistic skills, modernism, Postmodernism, ethical literary criticism, and stylistics in applied linguistics, has greatly expanded the realm for the criticism of O’Hara’s poetry and, at the same time, brought a new atmosphere to the research on the significance of O’Hara’s ideas about writing and his poetics. Marjorie Perloff’s Frank O’Hara: Poet among Painters is, undoubtedly, an authoritative book of reference. Jennifer Jacob Brown’s essay, “Frank O’Hara and the Poetics of Paintings,” in Valley Voices: A Literary Review expounds how O’Hara’s poetry writing perceives and benefits from the art of New York painting in two generations. In addition, it is also worth mentioning that David Lehman’s monograph, The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets, also focuses its critical perspective on the theme and artistic features of O’Hara’s poetry.

Fourth, it is easy to discover new directions and new topics in examining the academic achievements of international O’Hara Studies between 2010 and 2015. A series of essays, including Allison Campbell’s “Irreverent Nature: Frank O’Hara as Poet of City Ecology” in Valley Voices: A Literary Review, Jennifer Brewington’s “The Tradition of Play in the New York School of Poets,” Peter Stoneley’s “Frank O’Hara and French in the Pejorative Sense,” and Todd Tietchen’s “Frank O’Hara and the Poetics of the Digital,” rely on an in-depth analysis of the literariness of O’Hara’s poetry to intensify the interdisciplinary investigation of the interactions, interinfluences, and intersections between the stylistic study of the New York School of poetry and other disciplines. No doubt, all these studies have offered a profound impetus in studying different schools in American poetry as well as the identification with its poetic culture.

1.1.3 Existing Issues in O’Hara Studies and New Trends in the Study of His Urban Poetics

As compared before the 1950s, the contemporary study of American poetry has gone through some fundamental changes and paid more attention to the details of regional flavors and the time factors of heterogeneous cultures. Today, the abundant scholarship on O’Hara’s poetry at home and abroad has produced many outstanding publications that look closely at the poet’s distinctive individual characteristics, crystal-clear creative ideas, and avant-garde artistic expression techniques, but the study of poems created by outstanding poetry groups, poems that are totally in the same line with the political, economic, and cultural attributes, is, after all, a multi-prism review of today’s American society. Its continuity and development require pioneering innovative research, so as to trace the entire course of development in O’Hara’s urban poetics. This book presents “urban poetics,” like a crystal-clear spindrift of times, out of the vast sea of poems from the New York School of Poetry in the hope of providing new meaning to his poems from the perspective of urban culture as defined by a comprehensive art (our discussion only covers poetry), so that it might help to raise the study of O’Hara’s urban poetry to a higher level in China.

Even though the content of this book is constructed with a defining framework, in which the New York School poet O’Hara and his urban poetry would be addressed as primary issues, the focus of this book is not the history of the poet’s poetry writing but the history of the city and the trend of its cultural development represented in his poetics. In other words, the study of urban poetics in this book is a study of literary imagination involving urban culture. The unique connection between O’Hara and the urban culture he lived in reflects the spiritual journey of this urban poet. Through the art of poetic language, O’Hara conveyed the implications of New York’s urban culture and created a voice of his time and a discourse of his nation. In adherence to such a purpose in poetic study, this book attempts to adopt a new perspective in illustrating the diverse construction of urban culture as the creative mechanism for contemporary American poetry, broaden the poetic vision in studying O’Hara’s urban poetry, and apply the latest scholarship in the criticism of urban literature to the research on the writing and imagery of poetic styles.

Since the New York School poets were often passionate about conducting language experiments in poetic forms and exhibiting ingenuity in their avant-garde poetics, the previous study of O’Hara’s poetry in and outside China was more concerned with the rhyming patterns and rhetorical devices of his poetry, rather than a comprehensive consideration of the different dynamics that had established the characteristics of O’Hara’s urban poetics, including diachronic commonality, cultural background, spatial horizon, and ethical orientation. To execute a deeper interpretation of O’Hara’s urban poetics, this book not only relies on literary and artistic theories like cultural poetics, autobiographical theory, spatial literary theory, modernism, Postmodernism, and ethical literary criticism but also integrates common knowledge about sociological, anthropological, and other fields, revealing the deeply hidden connotations of urban culture and developmental mechanism of poetry beneath the surface of O’Hara’s unconventional poetic language. All this is intended to fulfill the goal in writing this book, namely, declaring that O’Hara’s urban poetics is not only an art of Peronism, impromptu and lyrical, but also a part of life, history, and human civilization.

1.2 Urban Poetry: the New York School Poetry and Its Leading Figures

During the Second World War, the United States took the advantage of its strong industry and agriculture to provide endless military supplies to the anti-fascist countries and brought in billions of dollars to its national treasure through numerous arms deals. The former Soviet Union, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, and other countries that participated in the Second World War were badly debilitated after suffering heavy losses. The US, however, easily reaped huge profits as it was reluctant to get involved in the war. By the end of the war, the US had already strengthened its power tremendously, possessing 60 percent of the total industrial output value of the capitalist world and 75 percent of the world’s total gold reserve, and listing the US dollar as the world’s most valuable trading currency, and henceforth replacing the old British Empire as the world’s number one superpower. In the 1950s, during the eight-year reign of the Republican government led by President Eisenhower, the US became what the economist John Kenneth Galbraith called a “rich society” as its economy, once again, accelerated rapidly and steadily, and its people’s ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 The Origin of Frank O’Hara’s Urban Poetics
• 2 Theoretical Basis of Frank O’Hara’s Urban Poetics
• 3 The Culture of Frank O’Hara’s Urban Poetics
• 4 The Aesthetics of Frank O’Hara’s Urban Poetics
• 5 Philosophy in Frank O’Hara’s Urban Poetics
• 6 Literary Ethics in Frank O’Hara’s Urban Poetics
• 7 Space in Frank O’Hara’s Urban Poetics
• 8 Modernity, Postmodernity, and Last Words
• Appendix A Short Chronology of Frank O’Hara
• Bibliography
• Index