When Frank O'Hara died in 1966 at the age of 40, Allen Ginsberg
called him "chattering Frank," "the gaudy poet." Ginsberg was
stating a consensus about O'Hara's poetry, that, like the man, it
was vivid and witty but not deeply serious. In the first
full-length critical treatment of O'Hara's work, Marjorie Perloff
attempts to annul the "myth" of frivolity and to "right the
balance" between personal legend and poetic worth. Nevertheless,
she relies heavily on biographical detail, as well as on
literary-historical research, to gain access to the poems. On the
one hand, she traces O'Hara's syntactical dislocations, cinematic
transitions, and fondness for proper names, specific imagery, and
unaccountable juxtapositions to the French surrealists, Rimbaud,
Apollinaire, and abstract expressionist painting. But in order to
make the substance of the poems at all coherent, she resorts to
describing O'Hara's love affairs and daily rounds. Perloff does
make a careful case for the poet's learnedness and the sustained
(though intensely personal) growth of his technical ability; but
the poems are finally full of odd references and haphazard flights,
which Perloff never finds a satisfactory way to elucidate.
Ultimately, for all her industry, she fails to demonstrate the
necessity and authority of any but a few of the poems. (Kirkus
Reviews)
Drawing extensively upon the poet's unpublished manuscripts--poems,
journals, essays, and letters--as well as all his published works,
Marjorie Perloff presents Frank O'Hara as one of the central poets
of the postwar period and an important critic of the visual arts.
Perloff traces the poet's development through his early years at
Harvard and his interest in French Dadaism and Surrealism to his
later poems that fuse literary influence with elements from
Abstract Expressionist painting, atonal music, and contemporary
film. This edition contains a new Introduction addressing O'Hara's
homosexuality, his attitudes toward racism, and changes in poetic
climate cover the past few decades.
"A groundbreaking study. [This book] is a genuine work of
criticism. . . . Through Marjorie Perloff's book we see an O'Hara
perhaps only his closer associates saw before: a poet fully aware
of the traditions and techniques of his craft who, in a life
tragically foreshortened, produced an adventurous if somewhat
erratic body of American verse."--David Lenson, "Chronicle of
Higher Education"
"Perloff is a reliable, well-informed, discreet, sensitive . . .
guide. . . . She is impressive in the way she deals with O'Hara's
relationship to painters and paintings, and she does give
first-rate readings of four major poems."--Jonathan Cott, "New York
Times Book Review"
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