Frank O’Hara was born On 1926, in Baltimore. He grew up in central in Grafton, a suburb of Worcester. After his duty for two years in US. Navy, he went to the Harvard University of Michigan.
(Prestianni 129) First, he studied music. He wanted to become a concert pianist but later changed to English. He presented classes in philosophy and theology, while writing too much in his spare time. After being in Harvard University, he wrote his first poem and also met with some important poets like John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch. After that, those poets established a literary movement known as the New York School of Poetry.
They began publishing poems in the Harvard Advocate. O’Hara obtained a master’s degree in English Literature and creative writing. Later, he won a Hopwood award for a collection of poems called try!try!. In 1951 O’Hara travelled to New York City.
He was pointedly involved in the New York art world and for more than two years, he worked as a producer of Art News. Posteriorly, he worked as a compatriot curator of the Museum of Modern Art for fifteen years. He wrote reviews and articles for the museum and various journals during this time as well as poetry and plays. ( Gooch 177) In 1952 O’Hara made his first collection of thirteen poems A City Winter and Other Poem and published it at the same year.
Similar to the other New York School poets, O’Hara setteled strong personal ties with some Abstract Expressionist painters like Larry Rivers and Jackson Pollock. O’Hara died in 1966 by a car accident. Most of O’Hara’s poetry is autobiographical, because it depended on what is happening to him in the moment and his observation of New York daily life. Donald Allen says in his introduction to The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, “That Frank O’Hara tended to think of his poems as a record of his life is apparent in much of his work.” ( Berrigan 279) All of his poems show the effect of Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism, Russian poetry, and poets associated with French Symbolism. The main artists of this abstract expressionism movement, were Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Jackson Pollock.
Those group of artists were very brilliant in New York, and O’Hara was a part of the avant-garde art along with John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch. O’Hara has Some significant works as A City Winter and Other Poems, Two Drawings by Larry Rivers, Oranges: 12 pastorals, Meditations in an Emergency, Second Avenue, Cover drawing by Larry Rivers, Odes, Lunch Poems, and Love Poems.( Afam, 333)
