City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara

Short story writer and poet Gooch has written a fine and lively biography of O'Hara, who was killed at the age of 40 in 1966 by a speeding Jeep on the beach at Fire Island after living through the whirlwind of artistic and bohemian life in New York City during the 1950s and 1960s. Born in Grafton, Mass., O'Hara left his strict Catholic father and alcoholic mother for the Navy before matriculating at Harvard and venturing to the University of Michigan. Gooch paints the everyday details of O'Hara's life--he was a published poet, a critic for ArtNews and a curator at the Museum of Modern Art --with friendly and specific strokes. His career, loves and influences in New York City are all here: correspondence with John Ashbery about William show more Carlos Williams; posing nude while employed at MOMA; angry bouts with abstract painter Grace Hartigan, etc. Photos not seen by PW. BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Gooch offers a lengthy first biography of Frank O'Hara, the New York School poet of the Fifties and Sixties who espoused the Abstract Expressionism that gave way to Pop Art. Born of a Massachusetts Irish Catholic family, O'Hara contemplated music as a career but, after serving in the navy and attending Harvard, he decided on poetry. He did graduate work at the University of Michigan, then came to New York and became a poet, curator at the Museum of Modern Art, and critic for ArtNews. He assisted many avant-garde poets and painters; his multimedia outlook marks much of his poetry. This well-researched book is generously garnished both with samples of his work and his homosexual attachments and details his struggle with alcohol. Tragically, O'Hara was struck and killed by a car in 1966, at the age of 40. Recommended for general and special collections.
- Kenneth Mintz, Hoboken P.L., N.J.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. show less

Stunningly well-researched and very readable bio of a great New York City poet. Like Gertrude Stein, he created word pictures or added words to pictures. O'Hara lived life on the edge, sadly he drank too much - and even sadder had to die much too early. A poet who howled to high heaven. "One must live in a way; we must channel, there is not time nor space, one must hurry, one must avoid impediments, snares, detours; one must not be stifled in a closed social or artistic railway station waiting for the train; I've a long way to go, and I'm late already."