Frank O'Hara Books

Joe LeSueur's memoir of his friend and companion, is a truly illuminating portrait of the artist. What makes these digressions so rich and rewarding for the reader, is the unique perspective LeSueur is able to bring to this material. These are LeSueur's memories of experiences and events shared with O'Hara and their myriad of friends and acquaintances. I found this book to be compelling, intimate and inspiring (indeed, "Lunch Poems" and "Selected Poems" were never too far out of reach, and both read from cover to cover). By virtue of having been a participant or, at the very least having been an eye witness to the events depicted, LeSueur has captured not just a time and place, but the essence of a cherished friend. I found myself reading slowly, savoring each passage. By the end of the book I felt I had really gotten to know O'Hara and his circle of friends, and found myself in tears as I read the last few pages. LeSueur's memoir is a tribute to Frank O'Hara as both an artist and a beloved friend.

Joe LeSueur suspected himself of being related to Joan Crawford (whose real name is Lucille LeSueur) somehow so he 'deserves' to write about his friendship with one of the greatest, quirkiest, most breathtaking urban poets of all time. It was a remarkable friendship too. Verging on love, but never quite turning into, or just silent about the whole thing, playful, full of respect, full of tenderness and yet ultimately human; the quarrels, the harsh words, everything is there... The friend tiptoes around his subject, peeps through the curtain now and then, dissapears only to reappear, is by turns sad and nostalgic, funny and obscene. Frank o'hara would have loved this book.

At Frank O'Hara's funeral, composer Virgil Thomsom turned to the poet's longtime friend Joe LeSueur and said, "Baby, I hope you kept a journal." Though clearly not drawing upon stale journal entries, LeSueur's memoir of his relationship with O'Hara (which survived the vicissitudes of its ever-changing status...friends to lovers to friends, etc.) is a nice blend of personal memories and feverish impromptu research (Brad Gooch's biography seems to have been ever at his elbow). LeSueur is neither vindictive nor pointlessly benign. He truly understood and appreciated O'Hara's central position in the explosion of art that was happening in New York in the 50s and 60s. Unlike Ginsberg and the Beat poets, O'Hara was equally at ease among literary folk, musicians, and painters (especially the abstract expressionists). To read about O'Hara is to read about the greatness of post-war New York.

DIGRESSIONS is actually helpful, too. Because O'Hara often adopted a casual, off-hand, personal approach when writing his poems, it is great to have someone who was intimate with the poet to explain "who's who" and "what's what." LeSueur, however, is equally comfortable admitting when he's baffled by an O'Hara reference, and explanations (and reminiscences) are never forced.

One other thing--DIGRESSIONS is an enlightening portrait of gay life in New York prior to the Stonewall riots. O'Hara and LeSueur were both openly gay, though they had quite different approaches to meeting their sexual needs. O'Hara seems to have had fewer partners, usually choosing them from his circle of friends and aquaintances. LeSueur seemed to favor one-night stands and casual sex. Perhaps this difference is one reason their friendship continued long after their sexual intimacy ended. If only LeSueur had lived long enough to write DIGRESSIONS ON GAY LIFE BEFORE STONEWALL.

This is a remarkable book. If you ever loved Frank O'Hara's poetry, the book is really a necessity. It gives personal reminiscences about the writing of some of the famous poems: 'The day Lady died', 'A true account of talking to the Sun...', etc. It brings many of the more obscure and personal poems into remarkable focus. It also illumines many of names and references that appear throughout the poems. All of this from probably the closest witness to O'Hara's life, creative and otherwise. For these reasons, it is a quite an unusual treasure.

But beyond its usefulness to O'Hara's poetry, the book is the story of a friendship. And an account of a special time in American arts and letters - told from one of the members at the party. LeSueur's presence in O'Hara's life might have been partly due to charm and good lucks (which he discusses), but that apparently never stopped him from being important to O'Hara. (The famous 'Lunch Poems' is dedicated to him.) We are fortunate that he was a careful observer and was blessed with a remarkable memory. Apparently he died shortly before the book was published, which is poignant, because the book is also a tribute to LeSueur's life, and a celebration.

Joe LeSueur has provided the cultural history of American arts in the mid-20th Century with this seamlessly interesting and informative inside perspective on the important role of Frank O'Hara - poet, art critic, champion of the visual, musical, and literary arts par excellence. DIGRESSIONS ON SOME POEMS BY FRANK O'HARA is not only a clever and viable means to writing a memoir: it provides insights into the growingly important works of O'Hara who some are now ranking as the 20th century version of Walt Whitman as Poet of the City. While many of the poems introducing each chapter are well known to us, it is the window to the world of O'Hara's life and times that is so well served by Joe LeSueur's writing. Frank O'Hara was bonded with such luminaries as Willem de Kooning, Elaine de Kooning, Larry Rivers, Joan Mitchell, Jackson Pollock, Grace Hartigan, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Lincoln Kirsten, WH Auden, Kenneth Koch - the list is endless. O'Hara was a behind the scenes observor, never hogging the limelight and in fact avoiding it, always with his keen eye on good art, good music, good writing, and always turning out poems that only now are being read seriously by the general public. Joe LeSueur live with O'Hara, joining O'Hara in his flagrantly 'Out' gay life, hobnobbing with all the other gay artists of his time in a way that makes him the recorder of that important preStonewall age, a time when even the giants such as Aaron Copeland, Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, etc were closeted. At times LeSueur borders on the gossipy side, but that only enhances his subject. What we are left with here is a wonderfully composed tribute to a great artist and supporter of the arts. The overall effect of this book is monumental, and at the same time exceedingly conversational. Very Highly Recommended.

If there's one book on the mystery that is Morton Feldman, it's "Give My Regards", it's in his own words, for starters. In it he covers his fascination and love of painting, particularly shedding light on his relationship with Philip Guston, and giving pretty expansive coverage of his early years as a composer in the 1950s.

Along with his views on art, he gives insight into his musical philosophy, some places echoing what his colleague and friend John Cage would say. Feldman even gives sharp musical criticism about Cage, while at the same time, extolling their friendship, and writing about him in the most flattering light.

Aside from his relationship with Cage, Feldman covers Stockhausen and Boulez quite a lot, paying particular attention to Boulez's philosophy, as he humorously tears it apart. While not compiled by Feldman himself (complied by his widow and released in 2000) it gives a great look into Feldman, the composer, writer, and art critic. The book is even interspersed with various liner notes he wrote from his numerous recordings, and programs. At twelve dollars, I strongly recommend this book to anyone that wants to learn about Morton Feldman.

" The day Jackson Pollock died I called a certain man I knew- a very great painter-and told him the news. After a long pause he said, in a voice so low it was barely a whisper,' That son of a b---he did it'. . . . With this supreme gesture Pollock had wrapped up an era and walked away from it." Feldman was very much part of that era, the Fifties when American art was becoming the most important post-war art there was its unique expressions. Sure Europeans tried to copy us but only became more academic about as Boulez and his excursions into chance/aleatoric gesturing. This collection of essays very clearly reveals how important American expeimentalism was to music. Feldman's forever endeavor to merely create, create at a high intensity working like a Dutch diamond cutter,or lens grinder,toying with creative means as his use of indelible ink, this he said makes you think about what your writing than how you are writing, puts the creative process back into the head.Or composing at the piano, which slows you down so you need to think more. He followed the intellectual currents, anything that brought a sense of richness and other dimension to his art, he knew for instance Henri Bergson's concept of memory and time,how that might affect his music,and painterly means was second nature to him hanging out at the Cedar Bar in New York talking for hours on Light,texture,perception,shape,design,concept, facility,gesture,timbre,tone,chiarscuro, there is ample historical data here as well, almost like a subtext of these ,like an unwritten history of the avant-garde, a "Conversation with Stravinsky"(not really),his first meeting with John Cage(after a performance of Webern), Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, also his travels to Berlin, and England and experiencing the avant-garde through Cornelius Cardew, and British experimentalism.His last years was devoted to long durational compositions, and he merely said he had more time to compose in these years,but Feldman here is filled with marvelous quotes,things,items,shapes for the mind"I knew I was going to be a professional the day I first became practical.Practicality took the form of copying out my music neatly,keeping my desk tidy and organized-all the unimportant things that seem unrelated to the work,yet somehow do affect it.". He also knows how to look from greater heights from mountains, tothe substance of modernity, those who stopped creating and became more interested in themselves as Stockhausen were "Modernists"; for Feldman allowing your materials,the shape,structures of your music tell you the secrets of creativity was most important and became a cause.

Morton Feldman's essays and liner notes are every bit as challenging as his music. In fact, I would like to turn one of Morty's quotable lines on its ear and say that "Feldman couldn't write a note unless it was literary." Of course, I'm inserting Feldman's name for the orginal Ives (see page 165 of this book), but I have to say that this composer provides in these pages the "narrative dark matter and coherent strange attractors" for his--in the main--disjunctive sounds. With this book Feldman positions himself in the same great tradition of writer-musicians as Berlioz, while all the while disparaging that very tradition! In fact, I would say that of all the recent experimentalists--Cage included--Feldman had to have been the most literary.

What a fine mind, and what a great loss to have only one side of Feldman's legendary conversational powers in this book, but, until everyone in the world has sense enough to stop what they're doing and applaud Morton Feldman's brilliance and the END of TIME COMES and Feldman himself descends from on high seated on a golden bar stool, ready to take on all comers, they will have to be content with this written fossil. And of course the music...but that's another story.

This book includes an appreciation of Morty and his work by Frank O'Hara, another person I wish I'd met.

This book, collecting all of Morton Feldman's published writings--along with four miscellaneous pieces--is an expanded version of a book originally published in a bilingual German/English edition in 1985, edited by Walter Zimmermann. To the original book, the editor, B. H. Friedman has added his own introduction, a postface by the poet Frank O'Hara, a late friend of Feldman's, and various other writings not collected in the original book.

There is much to enjoy here, from Feldman's reminiscences of his New York School colleagues, his admiration for Varese, his not uncritical appreciation of Webern and Stockhausen and his dislike for Boulez and Schoenberg. Equally, there is much interesting material on the visual arts as well: Feldman's passions for Mondrian, Pollock, Guston and Rothko are intimately related to his music and this book illuminates this strongly. Feldman's understanding of the need for a specifically US artistic and musical tradition--and how this tradition came about--is particularly illuminating, as is his writing about his colleague and friend John Cage.

Feldman's writing style is clear and conversational--if it occasionally lacks in depth this is a minor sin in comparison to the wilfully obfuscatory writings of the young Boulez, for example. Because of its own nature as a collection of unrelated pieces, this book tends to contain a little too much repetition and some very slight pieces (often notes from recordings or performances). I would have liked a little more writing on Feldman's own music--the rare occasions where he explains his techniques are highly interesting--but even with these flaws anyone interested in Feldman's music or the New York School in general will find this book very interesting.

What a pleasure it is to read the friendship between the lines of two such aesthetically rich poets as it was preserved onto paper 30 years ago. At first I read this book trying to figure out who wrote what. Oh, that sounds like a Berkson line, or that sounds like O'hara. But the pieces in this book really do, for the most part, lend themselves to being read as if written by a singular author; true of the best of collaborations. The work thus feels whole, controlled, and, simulataneously, spontaneous and wild. Lots of gratitude to Owl Press for saving this miraculous work from dust bin of history.

Alternately dashing & coy, these rapturous hymns ride a virgin-mary-go-round of respect & adulation for the skewed, tilted & impossible to love. With their conversational odes to the crooked spires of literary conspirators & the neighborhoods they rise from, Berkson & O'Hara erect an irresistible testament to friendship & the cracked open world of charming collaboration. The precarious steeple of St. Bridget's church in New York City might be gone, but what this pair of poet raconteurs have done will keep its pointed spirit forever lodged in anyone who eavesdrops on this reflectively genuflecting collection.

What other pair from the New York School would dare write poems about a crooked steeple? These poems (The Hymns) are sublime, silly, and brilliant, and are the perfect appetizer to the Other Writings, especially the fictional correspondace between Angelicus and Fidelio Fobb which had me rolling for hours. Even the "Unfinished Novel" was interestingly baffling albeit fleeting. All and all an incredibly savory mix of collaborations by two of the best poets in America!

In Memory Of My Feelings is a collection which examines contemporary artist Frank O'Hara and his influence on American art, providing an excellent catalog of both his works and portraits of O'Hara as presented by his contemporary artists. Color pictures on almost every page accompany a scholarly survey of his life, times, and the art circles he worked with. An excellent catalog.

Frank O'Hara poetry makes constant references to painting. He was friends with many painters, and was a curator at MOMA. This book provides a convenient visual tour of O'Hara art-world connections, including many paintings, drawings, and photos of the poet, along with his collaborations with Larry Rivers and Joe Brainard.

Dear Diary: I have fallen in love with a poet named Frank O'Hara. I started with "Lunch Poems," but needed more. This volume is divine. O'Hara sneaks up on you. His style is so simple, so conversational, that you often times are surprised by the sudden depth of feeling comminicated in a final phrase. I don't know enough about poetry to prattle on and on without betraying my ignornace in short order. However, I know what I like, I know what speaks to me. I know that Frank O'Hara was a great poet.

It's not exactly pocket-sized, but this volume can be conveniently and inconspicuously carried to lunch uptown, midtown, downtown, or out of town. There is a great collection of poems here (no plays), from the short and sweet to the longer and sweeter. All set in beautiful type on nice, formal heavier paper and with the inclusion of "Personism: A Manifesto" for an introduction and the cover art by O'Hara's personal friend. The cover is more than just interesting, however, it really informs some of the questions about confessional poetry raised by O'Hara's work. Just look at it for awhile... By the way, if you haven't yet read Frank O'Hara's poetry, this volume is an excellent and accessible place to start. Grab a fork, a cup of coffee, and dig in!

Much like his poems, Frank O'Hara's plays are hit-or-miss. Most of them were clearly written in a matter of minutes, and never intended for production. Many are simply inside jokes about his group of friends. But the good plays have no equal in the experimental theater of the 50's and 60's. "The General Returns From One Place to Another," one of the few in this collection that was actually produced, is a hilarious piece about a MacArthur-like figure who enacts dramatic returns to Pacific islands where no one has ever heard of him. Most of the other plays are more like surrealist poems in dialogue form. For aficionados of O'Hara, this is a necessary companion to his _Collected Poems_.

I've got so many opinions about BEAUTIFUL ENEMIES that I will be misquoting its author for years, arguing about its contentions, red-faced, drunken, at parties and conferences, watching with immense satisfaction as its truths eventually percolate through the strong soil of O'Hara criticism. Andrew Epstein, himself an accomplished poet, wades into deep waters with his study of the friendships between O'Hara and Ashbery and between Baraka and O'Hara. I was enthralled throughout the entire book and think you might be too. Even the notes are beautifully written, compact, thorough, yet with Epsteinian touches of wit and esprit.

A contrarian, even controversialist bent animates Epstein here, and if you come away from BEAUTIFUL ENEMIES feeling your head is about to explode, don't say I didn't warn you. Seems that everything (well, all the obvious things) that we had ever been taught about the three poets were wrong, even the most basic of our assumptions. You thought Frank O'Hara the apostle of friendship and community? Wrong. Through a clever and conscientious use of letters, diaries, contemporary news items, interview material, and most of all through recourse to the poems themselves (including some "new" material that, for the most part, is wholly surprising and convincing), Epstein is able to shove O'Hara more towards the Jack Spicer school of contentious grump whose ideas of friendship included competition, division, testing, and a free floating anxiety that manifests itself in unusual verbal tactics. "I hope," he writes, "to provide a corrective here to the usual sense that Frank O'Hara is a poet of `sociability' whose work simply `celebrates' his friends and his coterie.' It's not just rhetoric, there's a genuinely original vision of O'Hara here that complicates the work immeasurably and makes him not so annoying--not that I ever really found him annoying, but thinking about the old, "received" version of O'Hara, the sunny Tom Hanks of poetry who's everybody's favorite pet, just makes my blood run cold. I like the new guy, and he's sexier to boot!

If you thought Ashbery cold or silent about the human condition, a la Mark Halliday, surprise, for Epstein reads Ashbery (particularly in THE DOUBLE DREAM OF SPRING, the book he wrote after O'Hara's death) as a poet very much concerned with personal relationships, particularly friendship and its ups and downs. The material here is thinner on the ground, but I suppose it's possible, and Epstein has won so much goodwill from his previous reading I could forgive him nearly anything. Plus he has unearthed a beautiful, witty, tender, collaborative poem written in alternate couplets by FO'H and JA that illustrates perfectly--as though fabricated for the occasion--how friendship is always a bag mixed to brimming with competition, adoration, a Wayne Koestenbaum sort of erotics, and a perfect period panache. (Maybe this balances out another undocumented poem by O'Hara that Epstein found in Kenneth Koch's papers, "Finding Leroi a Lawyer," which some may champion but others will find the singlemost dumbest poem O'Hara ever put to paper.)

If you thought, following all previous Baraka scholars, that Baraka's "Beat" period was but a inconsequential and negligible phase of what Epstein calls a "conversion narrative," then you are missing out on some intensely great work; Epstein reverses conventional thinking here, or comes close to it, by plumping for the early work (written before Malcolm's assassination in February 1965) as far superior to the later Black Arts poetry and, perhaps, as politically committed. In each case, Epstein just patiently plays his cards until what seemed shocking or just startling for its own sake, when one began reading the chapter, seems by the end of it a perfectly reasoned, exquisitely marshaled argument. Were O'Hara and Baraka romantically involved, perhaps sexually involved? Here Epstein wades right in where angels fear to tread, following the leads provided in Brad Gooch's criminally underrated biography of O'Hara, CITY POET. It does seem as though the older, white, homosexual man, sometimes generous, sometimes threatening, always alluring, who pops up through much of Baraka's early prose, poetry and drama must have worn O'Hara's face at least occasionally. Baraka's supposed to appear at City Lights on Monday, I'll have to go and ask him what he thinks of BEAUTIFUL ENEMIES and his new avatar as sort of the Billy Strayhorn of the New American Poetry.

All in all, a groundbreaking and even better, a gorgeously written and thought out book. Hooray for Andrew Epstein! Some caveats, I don't 100% buy this new John Ashbery, our greatest poet of love and friendship. No way. Well, maybe a little way. And also I OD'd a bit on how without Emersonian pragmatism nothing important would ever have been thought, written or said. And I grimace when I see Epstein replaying Michael Davidson's effective, yet rhetorical vision of the Spicer circle as a hellish hotbed of gay homophobia and "exclusion," in order for him, Epstein, to say, "but our fellows didn't go that far." So there was no exclusion in the New York circles of O'Hara and Ashbery? Uh-hunh, and I'm Tallulah Bankhead.

Author: O'Hara, John, 1905-1970.
Title: Stories by John O'Hara / selected and with an introduction by Frank MacShane.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: New York : Random House, c1984.
Edition Date: 1985
Language: English
Projected Pub Date: 8501
Physical Details: xii, 414 p. ; 24 cm.
Other Authors: MacShane, Frank.
ISBN: 0-394-54083-2 /

This book, first published over twenty years ago, has certainly held up well. There are other books on O'Hara, but this remains the gold standard.

Its amazing to be able to read these poems again as the Frank O'Hara Collected Poems has been out of print for some time. I had no idea that Tibor de Nagy had this incredible history of publishing and such a long association with O'Hara.

The book reminds me all over again of how much I love his poems and why he is considered such an influential voice to so many younger poets. The cover design is beautiful, and on the back cover is the Grace Hartigan painting which was the cover of one of the original books.

The book's such a gem - I had to buy several for gifts.