Meditations in an Emergency

Description

Frank O'Hara was one of the great poets of the twentieth century and, along with such widely acclaimed writers as Denise Levertov, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley and Gary Snyder, a crucial contributor to what Donald Allen termed the New American Poetry, 'which, by its vitality alone, became the dominant force in the American poetic tradition.' Frank O'Hara was born in Baltimore in 1926 and grew up in New England; from 1951 he lived and worked in New York, both for Art News and for the Museum of Modern Art, where he was an associate curator. O'Hara's untimely death in 1966 at the age of forty was, in the words of fellow poet John Ashbery, 'the biggest secret loss to American poetry since John Wheelwright was killed.' This collection is a reissue of a volume first published by Grove Press in 1957, and it demonstrates beautifully the flawless rhythm underlying O'Hara's conviction that to write poetry, indeed to live, 'you just go on your nerve.'

Frank O'Hara was born in Baltimore in 1926 and grew up in Grafton, Massachusetts. From 1951 until his untimely death in 1966 he lived in New York City, and worked for both for Art News and for the Museum of Modem Art, where he was an associate curator. During this period, O'Hara evolved a new kind of urban poetry that brilliantly captures the heady excitements of a golden period in the city's artistic life. He was at the heart of a vibrant artistic circle that embraced fellow New York School poets John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch and James Schuyler, as well as experimental painters such as Willem de Kooning, Larry Rivers, and Jasper Johns.