Frank O'Hara
Frank O'Hara
Francis Russell "Frank" O'Harawas an American writer, poet and art critic. Because of his employment as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure in the New York School—an informal group of artists, writers and musicians who drew inspiration from jazz, surrealism, abstract expressionism, action painting and contemporary avant-garde art movements...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth27 March 1926
CountryUnited States of America
It may be that poetry makes life's nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time.
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?
I've got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I'll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don't want me to go where you go, so I go where you don't want me to.
Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!) 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
and I have mastered the speed and strength which is the armor of the world.
Kerouac: You're ruining American poetry, O'Hara. O'Hara: That's more than you ever did for it, Kerouac
There were occasionally rifts in the cloud where the face of a woman appeared, frowning.
...but it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night wondering whether you are any good or not and the only decision you can make is that you did it...
oh mothers you will have made the little tykes so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies they won't know the difference and if somebody does it'll be sheer gravy
The artificial is always innocent.
I embraced a cloud but when I soared it rained.
There is a geography which holds its hands just so far from the breast and pushes you away, crying so.
You just go on your nerve.
See how free we are! as a nation of persons.