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The Collected [Art] Poems
Frank O'Hara

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PROJECT STATUS: This book has been proposed as a project and is now seeking team members. Using the links at left, apply to join the team and help make this book happen. American poet Frank O'Hara (1926–1966) was a regular art reviewer for ARTnews and was an assistant curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Even in a brief glance at the most recent collected volume of his poetry, one can find numerous poems directly related to visual art (and there are certainly more than are easily identified by title alone). Much of O'Hara's other writing about art has been previously compiled: Along with exhibition catalogue essays from his curatorial work, a book entitled Art Chronicles: 1954–1966, is a series of short essays on individual artists of the day. A chapbook entitled What's With Modern Art? Selected Short Reviews & Other Art Writings, edited by Bill Berkson, was published in limited release. Also of relevance is a critical study by Marjorie Perloff, Frank O'Hara: Poet Among Painters, as well as a more recent illustrated catalogue of artwork associated with him, In Memory of My Feelings: Frank O'Hara and American Art. However, there seems to be no volume yet published that connects both of O'Hara's primary pursuits, visual art and poetry, where they intersect most directly—in the poems themselves. Project Notes: If an interested team were to form, their first step would be to contact O'Hara's estate to determine the possibility of publishing a new volume of his poetry devoted to visual art. The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara, edited by Donald Allen, and winner of the National Book Award for poetry when it was first published, may be the first place to begin isolating those individual poems for compilation. However, a team may also want to expand the project by including further examples of O'Hara's art writing that may not be otherwise available today.