A Note on Frank O'Hara

Although Frank O'Hara was one of the poets I touched on in my presentation a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to talk a little more about how poets like him "change the rules of poetry" so to speak. First of all, reading O'Hara's work for the first time left me a little on edge. I would ask myself: How is this poetry? After all, it goes against many of the traditional poetry guidelines that were in place before his time. As I began to read more of his work, especially outside of class, I started to really appreciate the different style of writing that O'Hara had to offer.

The tone to most of his poems is somewhat casual, and to me sets up a scene where the reader can grab a cup of coffee, sit down and read his collection of poems for hours. O'Hara structures his writing around nothing but small, straightforward details, and interweaves them into a beautiful story. One interesting thing to note as I was reading his collection of poems was that as O'Hara became more comfortable with his writing through the years, he shifted from a more structured setup to a more prose type of poem. I look forward to reading more collections from poets similar to O'Hara, and hope to acquire more writing techniques through this additional reading.