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."
關於作者:
"O''Hara, a key interpreter of the aesthetics of
abstract-expressionism, was a vital presence in New York''s dynamic
postwar art world, whether as a curator at the Museum of Modem Art,
a visionary critic, a lushly original and lyrical poet, or an
unflagging, often outrageous socialite." --Donna Seaman,
"Booklist""Moving in the way that only simple communication can be
moving. . . . His poems always manage a fresh start, free from the
dreadful posturings of the conventional verse of his generation."
--Kenneth Rexroth, "The New York Times Book Review"