The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara

Rating:
Summary: the virtues of shallowness
Review: An earlier reviewer describes O'Hara's poetry as shallow and vacuous. Shallow, maybe. But not vacuous. O'Hara's interested in the minutiae of daily life - buying a pack of Gauloises on the way to friends for dinner, seeing a headline about Lana Turner collapsing, the hard hats worn by construction workers. Read one poem and you might come away thinking it's trivial. But his life's work - taken as a whole - is an intelligent, alert, funny and perceptive record of a life lived to the full (I think someone else may have said that before me, somewhere). Thing is, O'Hara's interested in surfaces - things, events, trivia - because they have meaning. So his poetry is shallow in a very real and virtuous sense. He's not trying to make big statements, a la Charles Olson or Robert Lowell. What I find amazing is how moving his poetry can so often be, as in The Day Lady Died. On one reading, it's simply a list of things he does on the way to friends for dinner. But the impact is enormous. The poem gets you right up close to O'Hara as he learns of Billie Holiday's death and remembers hearing her sing. Nothing vacuous about that.

Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: His work is bold and yet still accessible to all poetry fans. This collection is amazing and a true must.

Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: I dare you to flip through this book and not be deeply affected. His poetry is immediate,honest, and completely transparent. Rare is it that emotion is so cleanly displayed, and so easily understandable. I have little patience for most poetry after reading this collection.

Rating:
Summary: beautiful, conversational, fun, incredible
Review: I found Frank O'Hara's collected poems in my college's library when I was a young girl of 17 and they really freaked me out. They flipped all my notions of "poetry" all on their heads, and I was intrigued and fascinated and turned on and plugged in and electrified. A great poet. Everyone should read this. His ear for diction and amazing wordplay amaze me each time I read anything he's written.

Rating:
Summary: .
Review: I'm only going to restate what others have said about him. His poetry is lyrical, generous, affirming. He can be spontaneous and thoughtful, traditional and completely fresh. His poetry is a vicarious peek into the life of a vital personality; this collection also provides a view into his poetic development, his dabbling with various forms, his more formal earlier attempts and the later expansion of his meter and line. I'm flipping through the collection and will note some of my favorites: "Sonnet on a Wedding", "Second Avenue", "To the Harbormaster", "In Memory of My Feelings", "To Maxine", "Having a Coke with You", "Weather Near St. Bridget's Steeples", "Mothers of America". If any 20th c poet is a model for modern American lyricism, he is it.

Rating:
Summary: He used words as a plastic medium
Review: The above is a quote from somebody or other talking about Shakespeare, I believe ("plastic" in the old sense of "fully malleable"). I can't think of a better way of describing O'Hara's poetry. He does things with words that are truly amazing, sound-wise. To get the full impact, read them aloud. I second the earlier reviewer's nomination for best poet of the past half-century. The only serious competition is A.R. Ammons.

Rating:
Summary: The Greatest American Poet of the Last Half-Century
Review: This is one of the indispensable titles in American literature. By turns lyrical and conversational, O'Hara's poems have the beauty of perfect stones and polished driftwood. That's the best I can do to describe this work, and it doesn't even come close. It would be more prudent to say, maybe, that the world would be a far better place if there were more people in it with O'Hara's eye for wit and ear for beauty.

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant writer, but his poems lack depth.
Review: This poet changed my life. This poet had style, made his own breaks (luck), had great friends because he gave a damn about them, and loved art unconditionally in any form but with a special love for the city, for the life and art and noise (music) of the city. This poet wore a tie and jacket and swiveled out the door of the Museum of Modern Art with more hip in his pocket than you, Bro. This poet was gay and and every man considered him their best friend and every woman wanted to sleep with him. This poet grew up near Boston, went to the Navy and Hafvard and spent a year in Ann Arbor but was New York all the way, the very heart and soul of New York and the New York School of poets. This poet extends the line from Keats to Rimbaud into the American future.