Frank O'Hara: Poet Among Painters

Drawing extensively upon the poet's unpublished manuscripts--poems, journals, essays, and letters--as well as all his published works, Marjorie Perloff presents Frank O'Hara as one of the central poets of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

Author: Marjorie Perloff
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 03/14/1998
Pages: 270
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.67lbs
Size: 8.05h x 5.35w x 0.65d
ISBN: 9780226660592

About the Author
Perloff, Marjorie: - Marjorie Perloff is the Sadie Dernham Patek Professor of Humanities Emerita at Stanford University and the Florence R. Scott Professor of English Emerita at the University of Southern California. She is the author of many books, including Poetics in a New Key and Unoriginal Genius, also published by the University of Chicago Press.