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Frank O'Hara in Transit

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2017

CAL REVELY-CALDER
CAL REVELY-CALDER*
Affiliation:
Faculty of English, University of Cambridge. Email: cr416@cam.ac.uk.
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Abstract

The poetry of Frank O'Hara (1926–66) takes place in the routes of New York City, both above and below the ground. This essay looks at the characteristics of his poetic lines, and some of the ways they invest themselves in each other, interacting complexly through rhymes and line breaks that we may struggle to negotiate. Then, broadening outwards to consider urban topographies and the experience of inhabiting the avenues of Manhattan, it discusses how the lines of a poem might relate to the lines of a subway system or street grid, and considers how O'Hara's poetry opens our attention, and our generosity, to the aspects of a cityscape that we habitually overlook.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , August 2018 , pp. 716 - 737
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2017 

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References

1 From O'Hara, Frank, “You Are Gorgeous and I'm Coming,” in O'Hara, The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara, ed. Allen, Donald, intro. Ashbery, John (hereafter CP) (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1995), 331Google Scholar.

2 The last sections of the Third Avenue El were removed in 1955; “You Are Gorgeous and I'm Coming” is dated 11 August 1959. See CP, 544.

3 Rimbaud, Arthur, “Voyelles,” in Rimbaud, Collected Poems, trans. Sorrell, Martin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 134Google Scholar.

4 Gooch, Brad, City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara (New York: Knopf, 1993)Google Scholar.

5 Frank O'Hara, “You Are Gorgeous and I'm Coming,” in CP, 331.

6 Brady, Andrea, “Distraction and Absorption on Second Avenue,” in Hampson, Robert and Montgomery, Will, eds., Frank O'Hara Now: New Essays on the New York Poet (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010), 59–69, 64Google Scholar.

7 Frank O'Hara, “Personism: A Manifesto,” in CP, 499.

8 Ibid., 498.

9 Ibid.

10 Ward, Geoff, Statutes of Liberty: The New York School of Poets (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, original emphasis.

11 Frank O'Hara, “In Memory of My Feelings,” in CP, 252.

12 Frank O'Hara, “Poem,” in CP, 244–45.

13 Stillman, Anne, “Frank O'Hara and Urban Pastoral,” Cambridge Quarterly, 40, 4 (Dec. 2011), 375–85, 380CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 “Stanza,” in Greene, Roland and Cushman, Stephen, chief eds., The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, fourth edn (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 1357–59, 1357CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 For more on the “step” as an aspect of O'Hara's thought and poetics see David Herd, “Stepping Out with Frank O'Hara,” in Hampson and Montgomery, 70–85.

16 Frank O'Hara, “Meditations in an Emergency,” in CP, 197.

17 Ricks, Christopher, “William Wordsworth 1: ‘A Pure Organic Pleasure from the Lines’,” in Ricks, The Force of Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 89–116, 90Google Scholar.

18 Frank O'Hara, “John Button Birthday,” in CP, 267–68.

19 See Gooch, City Poet, 247.

20 Frank O'Hara, “Rhapsody,” in CP, 325–26.

21 See Gooch, 324.

22 Brian M. Reed notes that O'Hara knew Crane's work well, and he makes the case for a number of other Crane allusions in O'Hara's poetry, though not the above lines from “Rhapsody.” See Reed, Brian M., Hart Crane: After His Lights (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), 195–224Google Scholar.

23 Crane, Hart, The Bridge, in The Collected Poems of Hart Crane, ed. Frank, Waldo (New York: Liveright, 1946), 1–58, 57–58Google Scholar.

24 Lethem, Jonathan, Fear of Music (33 ⅓) (New York: Continuum, 2012), 93Google Scholar, original emphasis.

25 Talking Heads, “Heaven,” from Fear of Music (Sire Records, 1979), track 8Google Scholar, transcription mine.

26 Lethem, 89.

27 Crane, 49–51.

28 See Gooch, 196–97.

29 O'Hara, Frank, “A Classical Last Act,” in O'Hara, Poems Retrieved, ed. Allen, Donald (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2013), 39Google Scholar.

30 See Gooch, 436.

31 Kantor, Tadeusz, “Annexed Reality,” from Kantor, A Journey through Other Spaces: Essays and Manifestos, 1944–1990, ed. and trans. Kobialka, Michal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 71–76, 76Google Scholar.

32 Frank O'Hara, “Song,” in CP, 327.

33 Stillman, “Frank O'Hara and Urban Pastoral,” 376.

34 John Ashbery, “Introduction” to CP, x.

35 Frank O'Hara, “Lines across the United States,” in O'Hara, Poems Retrieved, 39.

36 Ibid.

37 Mikoleit, Anne and Pürckhauer, Moritz, Urban Code: 100 Lessons for Understanding the City, trans. Nightingale, Susannah and Howe, Lindsay (Zurich: MIT Press, 2011), 107Google Scholar.

38 Frank O'Hara, Second Avenue, in CP, 139–50, 139.

39 O'Hara, Frank, “Notes on Second Avenue,” in O'Hara, Standing Still and Walking in New York, ed. Allen, Donald (San Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 1983), 37–40, 39Google Scholar.

40 O'Hara, Second Avenue, 147.

41 O'Hara, “Notes on Second Avenue,” 39–40.

42 Corbusier, Le, The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning, trans. Etchells, Frederick, 3rd edn (London: Architectural Press, 1971; first published as Urbanisme, Paris, 1924), 11, 208Google Scholar.

43 Greg Sargent, for instance, cites the phrase as common currency in his article “Miracle on Second Avenue,” in New York Magazine, 5 April 2004, at http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/n_10109. As of January 2017, the first part of the Second Avenue subway has at last begun service; the full line is currently scheduled to open in 2029, with the hope of further extensions to follow.

44 Le Corbusier, 5.

45 O'Hara, Second Avenue, 144.

46 Benjamin, Walter, The Arcades Project, ed. trans., and Eiland, Howard and McLaughlin, Kevin, based on the German edn ed. Tiedemann, Rolf (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999; first published as Das Passagen-Werk, Berlin, 1983), 84Google Scholar.

47 O'Hara, Second Avenue, 144.

48 O'Hara, “Notes on Second Avenue,” 37.

49 Quoted in Berkson, Bill and LeSueur, Joe, eds., Homage to Frank O'Hara (Bolinas, CA: Big Sky, 1988), 208Google Scholar.

50 Quoted in ibid., 164.

51 Quoted in Gooch, City Poet, 168.

52 Denby, Edwin, “Dancers, Buildings, and People in the Streets,” in Cornfield, Robert, ed., Dance Writings and Poetry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 252–60, 258Google Scholar.

53 O'Hara, Frank, “Introduction” to Denby, Edwin, Dancers, Buildings, and People in the Streets (New York: Horizon Press, 1965), 7–9, 9Google Scholar.

54 Ibid.