Frank O'hara

"Kerouac: You're ruining American poetry, O'Hara.
O'Hara: That's more than you ever did for it, Kerouac"
— Frank O'Hara
--------------------------------------------







Frank O'Hara was born March 27th 1926 in Baltimore, Maryland, he first studied music at the New England Conservatory and later he served in WWII on the Destroyer USS Nicholas in Japan and the South Pacific. When the war was over he attended Harvard University and began writing it was around that time that he met John Ashbury and began publishing his poetry. He graduated with a degree in English and went on to get an MBA from University of Michigan and later worked at the Museum of Modern Art. (poets.org)

His close relationships with many painters became the source of his inspiration for many of his poems. His poetry is autobiographical and the people and things that come through his life are based on his observations of them. His verses show influences of French surrealism, as it ignores the rules of poetry and abstract expressionism. Along with writing poetry he wrote plays and prose one of which was about the famous painter and his close friend Jackson Pollock in 1959 and another titles The New Spanish Painting and Sculpture from 1960. As curator of the museum he served a double personality as both a poet and art critic. He used his poetry to as a lens for his art criticism. His poems show us his passion for the arts in all forms. (Ashbury, Selected Prose)

According to Koch, O'Hara lets his thoughts flow into one another and hence we get a sense that poetry can be about anything one wants it to be. O'Hara starts his poems as if one would start a regular conversation. He shows that poems can be a combination of thoughts and dreams. Also that it is something that should happen in the moment. (Koch on O'Hara). O’ Hara was very controversial for his time and often seem to be making a mockery of the poetry world which made others in the poetry world view him negatively.

Some of the poems that we as a group decided to analyze are:
• Lana Turner has collapsed!
• To the Film Industry in Crisis
• For James Dean



"East of Eden”- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdMjKq8xk-E(trailer)


There is so much to be said on this film. O'Hara would agree, particularly in the idea or notion of the character Cal Trask, played by James Dean.
Where to start?
Since we will be watching this film in class this week, I will spare much of the detail of the film. In short, East of Eden is a tale that exploits the most wanted human emotion; to be loved. In fact, the film is about the consequences of not being loved, in its most elementary form patriarchal disobedience. Adapted from Steinbeck's Novel East of Eden, Kazan's adaptation circulates from the last part of the novel, saying he did not "like the first part much." Debatable? Absolutely. For our purposes, however, we are looking at the film, concentrating on James Dean.

James Dean. Cal Trask. Same person, arguably.

O'Hara wrote a poem entitled "For James Dean" right after Dean's death at only 24, in 1955.
James Dean has passion, he has anger, a psychologically complex astounding individual. Elia Kazan eloquently puts "You know how a dog will be mean and snarl at you---then you pat him, and he's all over you with affection? That's the way Dean was."
Now that makes for good poetry.
O'Hara has undoubtedly a passion for characters, in life, in cinema. We know this by his poems dedicated toward cinema stars. People gravitate towards conflict. No story would work without it. One could assume that O'Hara had this romanticized image of Dean in his mind, and related to a person with complexities ranging from total rebelliousness, to wounded puppy, to an unstoppable sexual beast. That being said, let's talk metaphor .In class, metaphor was explained to us as a sort of mode of resistance, not used as a trick which creates figurative imagery to activate language. The beauty of poetry, of music, of film is such; you can make out of it whatever you want to. There are no rules, no right or wrong.
Food for thought: What metaphoric portrayal of this verse does your brain create?

"For a young actor I am begging
peace, gods. Alone
in the empty streets of New York
I am its dirty feet and head
and he is dead.

Frank O'Hara was enormously influential on subsequent generations of American poets. O'Hara's poetry was colloquial and dreamy. He embraced a new kind of modernism, pop culture, and surrealism in his range of styles and influences. O'Hara was a personal writer, writing of personal choice. Put into context with the sociopolitical environment of 1950's America, the group thought that O'Hara directly relates the finite human personal choice to the ordering principle of a society. The 50's was not all smiles and sunshine, and instead of conforming to the inferiority of the chooser, O'Hara's poems are reflective of how he feels, how he was made to feel, how some of a society is often compelled to feel.

Food For Thought:
1. Why is Film, Art and Music a constant recurring theme throughout Frank O'Hara's poetry?
2. Why is O'Hara so fascinated with the film industry? What does he like about it?
3. Why is he so focused on James Dean? Where does this inspiration come from?
4.James Dean. Cal Trask. Same person, arguably. Why do people, O'Hara included, gravitate towards this man?
5.We talk about the idea of literary image in class. Assuming you all know something about James Dean, if not anything about the film East of Eden, when reading O'Hara's poem, what image does this create in your mind.
6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4pe7O1udjo.Why do you think that Nirvana was played in the background? Do you find any meaning to it? (This video certainly proves that Frank O'Hara is still on the minds of 20-something year olds alike)
7. How was O'Hara's collaboration with film and art displayed by the medium given and how was metaphoric usage evident in his work?

Can we conclude Frank O'Hara is a moth to a flame?

Just a couple of places we referenced when compositing the background information and other relevant ideas pertaining to O’Hara
Young, Jeff. "East of Eden." Kazan: The Master Director Discusses His Films. New York: NewMarket, 1999. 198-205. Print.

Altieri, Charles. "The Significance of Frank O'Hara." JSTOR. The University of Iowa, Dec. 1974. Web. 2 Feb. 2011. .

O'Hara, Frank. Meditations in an Emergency. New York: Grove, 1957. Print






Poems for those who need to follow along:

Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed!]
by Frank O'Hara


Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up







To the Film Industry in Crisis
by Frank O'Hara


Not you, lean quarterlies and swarthy periodicals
with your studious incursions toward the pomposity of ants,
nor you, experimental theatre in which Emotive Fruition
is wedding Poetic Insight perpetually, nor you,
promenading Grand Opera, obvious as an ear (though you
are close to my heart), but you, Motion Picture Industry,
it's you I love!

In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love.
And give credit where it's due: not to my starched nurse, who taught me
how to be bad and not bad rather than good (and has lately availed
herself of this information), not to the Catholic Church
which is at best an oversolemn introduction to cosmic entertainment,
not to the American Legion, which hates everybody, but to you,
glorious Silver Screen, tragic Technicolor, amorous Cinemascope,
stretching Vistavision and startling Stereophonic Sound, with all
your heavenly dimensions and reverberations and iconoclasms! To
Richard Barthelmess as the "tol'able" boy barefoot and in pants,
Jeanette MacDonald of the flaming hair and lips and long, long neck,
Sue Carroll as she sits for eternity on the damaged fender of a car
and smiles, Ginger Rogers with her pageboy bob like a sausage
on her shuffling shoulders, peach-melba-voiced Fred Astaire of the feet,
Eric von Stroheim, the seducer of mountain-climbers' gasping spouses,
the Tarzans, each and every one of you (I cannot bring myself to prefer
Johnny Weissmuller to Lex Barker, I cannot!), Mae West in a furry sled,
her bordello radiance and bland remarks, Rudolph Valentino of the moon,
its crushing passions, and moonlike, too, the gentle Norma Shearer,
Miriam Hopkins dropping her champagne glass off Joel McCrea's yacht,
and crying into the dappled sea, Clark Gable rescuing Gene Tierney
from Russia and Allan Jones rescuing Kitty Carlisle from Harpo Marx,
Cornel Wilde coughing blood on the piano keys while Merle Oberon berates,
Marilyn Monroe in her little spike heels reeling through Niagara Falls,
Joseph Cotten puzzling and Orson Welles puzzled and Dolores del Rio
eating orchids for lunch and breaking mirrors, Gloria Swanson reclining,
and Jean Harlow reclining and wiggling, and Alice Faye reclining
and wiggling and singing, Myrna Loy being calm and wise, William Powell
in his stunning urbanity, Elizabeth Taylor blossoming, yes, to you
and to all you others, the great, the near-great, the featured, the extras
who pass quickly and return in dreams saying your one or two lines,
my love!
Long may you illumine space with your marvellous appearances, delays
and enunciations, and may the money of the world glitteringly cover you
as you rest after a long day under the kleig lights with your faces
in packs for our edification, the way the clouds come often at night
but the heavens operate on the star system. It is a divine precedent
you perpetuate! Roll on, reels of celluloid, as the great earth rolls on!

For James Dean is pretty lengthy so please refer to the book, Meditations In An Emergency or you guys can email me and I can send it as a PDF for those without the book as yet, Terryann4@hotmail.com. Thanks guys hope you enjoyed!!!