LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake, fall 2001
Poetry Presentation Index

Presenter: Sancar Sallanti

Recorder: David Miller 

"My Heart"

by

Frank O'Hara

 Frank O'Hara

Frank (Francis Russell) O'Hara was born on June 27, 1926, in Baltimore, Maryland. He grew up in Massachusetts, and later studied piano at the New England Conservatory in Boston from 1941 to 1944. O'Hara then served in the South Pacific and Japan as a sonarsman on the destroyer USS Nicholas during World War II.

Following the war, O'Hara studied at Harvard College, where he majored in music and did some composing. While he also wrote poetry, he was more influenced by contemporary music, which was his first love, and art. However, he did have a few favorite poets: Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Pasternak, and Mayakovsky. While at Harvard, O'Hara met John Ashbery and soon began publishing poems in the Harvard Advocate. Despite his love for music, O'Hara changed his major and left Harvard in 1950 with a degree in English. He then attended graduate school at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and received his M.A. in 1951. That autumn O'Hara moved into an apartment in New York. He was soon employed at the front desk of the Museum of Modern Art and began to write seriously.

O'Hara's early work was considered both provocative and provoking. In 1952 his first volume of poetry, A City in Winter, attracted favorable attention; his essays on painting and sculpture and his reviews for ArtNews were considered brilliant. O'Hara became one of the most distinguished members of the New York School of poets, which also included Ashbery, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch. O'Hara's association with the painters Larry Rivers, Jackson Pollock, and Jasper Johns, also leaders of the New York School, became a source of inspiration for his highly original poetry. He attempted to produce with words the effects these artists had created on canvas. In certain instances, he collaborated with the painters to make "poem-paintings," paintings with word texts. O'Hara's most original volumes of verse, Meditations in an Emergency (1956) and Lunch Poems (1964), are impromptu lyrics, a jumble of witty talk, journalistic parodies, and surrealist imagery.

O'Hara continued working at the Museum of Modern Art throughout his life, curating exhibitions and writing introductions and catalogs for exhibits and tours. In 1966, while vacationing on Fire Island, Frank O'Hara was killed in a sand buggy accident. He was forty years old.

from

http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=165

Discussion

Sancar began by giving the class some background on Frank O’Hara, especially surrounding his involvement in the New York arts scene and his interest in abstract expressionism.

Sancar stated that O’Hara’s poetry was filled with Whitmanian enthusiasm and explosive surrealism.  And despite his critical acclaim, O’Hara refused to take his own poetry seriously and failed to keep copies of poems he wrote.  They were often retrieved from the letters he wrote.

Question regarding “My Heart”: What is gay in this poem?  Why is it included with this part of the course?

Dr. White:  Is there anything that says you have to read this as gay, or is this just a very good poem?

Jennifer: States that she thinks that wearing a work shirt to the opera means that he doesn’t want to be refined, that perhaps he is trying to overcompensate for something.  When he states that he doesn’t want his face to be shaven means that a smooth face is more feminine than a hairy face.

Jill then said that some people associate beards with something that they are trying to cover up. (General laughter as the attention is drawn to the bearded males in the room.)

Linda proposed the possibility that perhaps he just didn’t want to be stereotyped.  That he wants to be alive and vulgar but then he wants to go to the opera.

Jill referred to BLBITW stating that in it people were trying at times to overcompensate by wearing the “butch” outfits and that perhaps O’Hara was trying to decide whether he wants to go the really butch route or the lisping…, how do I fit, where do I feel comfortable?  He also wears the brown and gray suits, so is conformity what he is after?

A student stated that many people go to events in blue jeans, as regular people, rather than dressing up [pretentiously] and going as snobs, and that O’Hara, being involved in the arts, active in it, that it would make sense for him.  “I am me; accept it.”

Dr. White: Work shirts to the opera does reminisce of Whitman.  Whitman was a big opera fan.  There supposedly have been a number of studies on the effects of the opera on Whitman’s poetry.  Whitman was kind of famous for dressing as “one of the rough.”  He went through a “dandy” phase, but he did dress as a working man.  But the he did have a beard, so any type of stereotype, he seems to want to quickly exit.  Just as soon as he enters a stereotype, he finds a way out of it.

Jennifer stated that she would find it hard to tell where his (O’Hara’s) poetry comes from.  You can’t play on the heart.  You can’t tell what your heart is going to tell your head to do.  Poetry is open, so maybe he is half in, half out.  Mentions the struggles, conflicts, dilemmas that are inherent in poetry.

The class entered into a discussion about the possible meanings of the word “strain.”  It could mean disease, as in a strain of a virus, tension, as in stress, a musical strain, and all could make sense within the context of the line.  The strain to be around; the strain on the emotions--both were also mentioned as possibilities.

David:  Mentions the "criers and laughers" positing that he prefers neither, rather, something right down the middle--one strain would be the crier, one the laugher--when Jill states that perhaps he is open "to all of it," and since the poem is presented within the context of gay studies, it could mean "bi."

Jennifer stated that with crying being a feminine thing, that men don't cry, that crying would be feminine and laughing would be trying to cover up the feminine side, and would play right into the male/female stereotype.

Dr. White then said that part of the masculine code is just not having any feelings, and so one of the markers of "gayness" is you have to be either way up or way down, to have a kind of dramatic edge to your feelings.

A student said that the word "strain" carried a musical connotation making the crying and laughing sort of musical for her.

Dr. White then made a reference to the lines in "Twelfth Night" -- "Music be the food of love, play on" enhancing the concept of a musical strain.

Sancar:  Stated that crying people will be less likely to repress their feelings, and that laughing people will be just the opposite.

A student then said that the syntax toward the end of the poem is possibly very important when we consider the word "want," because it may be something that he is looking for that he wishes he could be.  She also states that he wants his heart to be open but it can't be.  But the better part of his heart, his poetry, is open, implying that his heart may have hidden secrets, but his poetry, being the better part of his heart, is open.

A student then said that if his heart is closed, then he may have been made fun of enough and hurt enough that he has closed his heart.

Jill stated that if he couldn't be open in his life, he could be open in his poetry, because poetry is something you can write and you can separate yourself from it.

Dr. White:  Stated that art and poetry are coded.  When reading or interpreting poetry or art, we can ask the question, "Does it say gay or not?"  Maybe it does and maybe it does not

Sancar then said that O'Hara had problems with the critics.  O'Hara stated that poetry is a serious thing. That's why I couldn't write a forthright poem.  And that with poetry, he can write without restrictions--he can write the way he wants.

A student remarked that it sounds like it comes naturally and easily.

Dr. Write then added that poetry is coded to the extent that it doesn't have to say anything.  And he remarked on the line "the immediacy of a bad movie" and referred to the point in TBLBITW where Tobias compares gayness to blackness (p. 211) and he focused on the word "campy."  He defined it as an aesthetic term for stuff that's so bad it's good.  And it's often associated with the gay sub-culture, as in "movies that you want to 'hoot' about or 'scream' about because they're so painfully bad or melodramatic."  The O'Hara line relates to this aesthetic.  But the camp aesthetic does not have to be gay, but it is often associated with the sub-culture.  O'Hara is often associated with a group of poets, the New York Poets, almost called the New York Mafia, a very powerful and respected group of poets who were in touch with each other.  The evidence suggests that if a poet was not gay, he received no attention from this group.  The most famous out of this group who is still living is John Ashbery.

Jackson Pollock came into the discussion as one of the painters involved in the abstract expressionism movement of the 60's & 70's.

Sancar then remarked that O'Hara was involved in "poetry painting" where the poet and painter collaborate.