City Poet

The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara

Brad Gooch

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780060976132
• eBook ISBN: 9780062303424
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Literarische Biographien

The definitive biography of Frank O'Hara, one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century, the magnetic literary figure at the center of New York's cultural life during the 1950s and 1960s.

City Poet captures the excitement and promise of mid-twentieth-century New York in the years when it became the epicenter of the art world, and illuminates the poet and artist at its heart. Brad Gooch traces Frank O'Hara's life from his parochial Catholic childhood to World War II, through his years at Harvard and New York. He brilliantly portrays O'Hara in in his element, surrounded by a circle of writers and artists who would transform America's cultural landscape: Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Helen Frankenthaler, Jackson Pollock, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, LeRoi Jones, and John Ashbery.

Gooch brings into focus the artistry and influence of a life "of guts and wit and style and passion" (Luc Sante) that was tragically abbreviated in 1966 when O'Hara, just forty and at the height of his creativity, was hit and killed by a jeep on the beach at Fire Island—a death that marked the end of an exceptional career and a remarkable era.

City Poet is illustrated with 55 black and white photographs.

Notes

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your e-book reader’s search tool.

Prologue

page 4 “It seems”: Letter from FOH to Kenneth Koch, 6/16/58.

“Frank’s head”: interview with Robert Dash, 9/5/91.

“two hundred mourners”: An incomplete list of those attending the funeral includes: William Agee, John Ashbery, William Berkson, Ted and Sandy Berrigan, Sheyla Beykal, Norman and Carey Bluhm, James Brodey, Harold Brodkey, Robert Cato, Joseph Ceravolo, Jerry Cohen, Robert Dash, Edwin Denby, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, René d’Harnoncourt, Karen Edwards, Frederick English, Morton Feldman, Helen Franc, Helen Frankenthaler, Jane Freilicher, B. H. and Abbie Friedman, Sanford Friedman, Henry Geldzahler, Allen Ginsberg, Mike Goldberg, Robert Goldwater, Tatyana Grosman, John Gruen, Barbara Guest, Philip Guston, Stephen Holden, Richard Howard, Sam Hunter, Irma Hurley, Howard and Mary Kanowitz, Alex and Ada Katz, Kenneth and Janice Koch, Lee Krasner, Ibram and Ernestine Lassaw, Frank Lima, Joseph LeSueur, Alfred Leslie, Joseph Lieber, Luke Matthiessen, Camilla McGrath, Kynaston McShine, J. J. Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, John Bernard Myers, Reuben Nakian, Barnett and Annalee Newman, Ellen (Adler) and David Oppenheim, Lafcadio Orlovsky, Peter Orlovsky, Larry Osgood, Robert Perrell, Waldo and Gary Rasmussen, Larry and Clarice Rivers, Gaby Rodgers, Harold and May Rosenberg, Sheila Rosenstein, Irving Sandler, Peter and Linda Schjeldahl, David Shapiro, Jack Smith, Patsy Southgate, James Thrall Soby, Tony Towle, Chuck Turner, Mindy Wager, Arnold Weinstein, Monroe Wheeler, Jane Wilson, and Marta Zogbaum.

5 “I always felt”: interview with Edward Gorey, 12/14/89.

“Why does it seem”: letter from Joe LeSueur to the author, 2/21/92.

“many bearded”: Peter Schjeldahl, “Frank O’Hara: ‘He Made Things & People Sacred,’” Village Voice, 8/11/66, reprinted in Homage to Frank O’Hara, ed. Bill Berkson and Joe LeSueur (Bolinas, Calif.: Big Sky, 1978), 139.

6 “at the funeral”: Lewis MacAdams, “Red River,” in Homage, 147.

“I felt”: interview with Joe LeSueur, 5/9–10/88.

“After his”: interview with Virgil Thomson, 2/2/89.

“it’s well known”: “Now That I Am in Madrid and Can Think,” The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, ed. Donald Allen (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), 356.

7 “I never knew”: interview with Bill Berkson, 10/2/88.

“That minister”: interview with LeSueur, 5/9–10/88.

“Frank O’Hara”: René d’Harnoncourt, Letter to the Editor, New York Times, 7/31/66, 16.

“a god”: FOH, “Larry Rivers: A Memoir,” Collected Poems, 512.

“standing”: Berkson, “Afterword,” in In Memory of My Feelings (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1967).

“America’s”: Schjeldahl, “Frank O’Hara,” 139.

“germ”: interview with Berkson, 10/2/88.

8 like voodoo: interview with James Brodey, 11/11/88.

“As a poet”: Schjeldahl, “Frank O’Hara,” 139–40.

“full of dreams”: letter from FOH to Fairfield Porter, 7/7/55.

“Larry’s”: interview with Waldo Rasmussen, 4/25/88.

“rather like”: FOH, “Larry Rivers,” 512.

“the question”: “Frank O’Hara, 40, Museum Curator,” New York Times, 7/26/66, 35.

9 “yoyo-cartwheel-violences”: “Invincibility.”

“Larry’s eulogy”: interview with Henry Geldzahler, 9/5/91.

“Frank was my”: Larry Rivers, “Speech Read at Frank O’Hara’s Funeral,” in Homage, 138.

“People had acted”: interview with Marjorie Luyckx, 9/5/91.

10 “What happened?”: interview with Tom Broderick, 3/10/90.

“Frank O’Hara was”: Rivers, “Speech,” in Homage, 138.

11 “He was”: interview with LeSueur, 5/9–10/88.

12 “a sort of W. C. Fields”: interview with Joe LeSueur, 4/10/90.

“He did give the feeling”: interview with Jane Freilicher, 1/9/90.

13 “I didn’t want him”: interview with Grace Hartigan, 9/13/89.

“I’m leaving”: interview with Maureen O’Hara, 1/18/88.

“As you know”: letter to Philip O’Hara, 1/11/63.

“Blondie will always be”: letter from FOH to family, 12/10/44.

16 “shyster”: interview with Grafton resident, 4/13/90.

17 “My mother said”: interview with Maureen O’Hara, 11/14/88.

“huge brilliants-encrusted”: FOH, “Autobiographical Fragments,” in Standing Still and Walking in New York, ed. Don Allen (San Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 1983), 3.

19 “I am amused”: interview with Maureen O’Hara, 11/14/88.

“calm and cool-headed”: letter from FOH to family, 10/13/44.

“one of the best-known men in town”: obituary in local Grafton newspaper, 1/25/47.

20 “My father drove”: interview with Philip O’Hara, 10/19/89.

“an astounding capacity”: letter from FOH to family, 3/19/45.

“with hands as big as clubs”: interview with Philip O’Hara, 10/19/89.

21 “His father sold”: interview with Tom Broderick, 3/10/90.

22 ...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• Birth
• Navy
• Harvard
• Ann Arbor Variations
• Second Avenue
• Meditations in an Emergency
• I Do This I Do That
• Love
• Bill’s School of New York
• Death
• Notes
• Index
• Permissions Acknowledgments
• Also by Brad Gooch
• Copyright
• About the Publisher