LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake, spring 2003
Poetry Presentation Summary

Leader- Jana Stafford

Recorder- Elizabeth Martin

“My Heart”

By Frank O’Hara

Frank O’Hara was born in Baltimore in 1926.  He studied piano at New England Conservatory in Boston from 1941-1944.  He enlisted in the Navy during WWII.  He was honorably discharged in 1946, then he went on to Harvard on the GI Bill.  He earned a BA in 1950. O’Hara then went to the University of Michigan where he was given a graduate fellowship in comparative literature and he earned a MA in 1951.  He became one of the most distinguished members of the New York School of Poets.  He took a desk job at Museum of Modern Art.  On his lunch breaks he wrote poems.  One of his more famous volumes is the Lunch Poems series.  He also was a great lover of movies, at least 55 of poems are about movies.  He was openly homosexual and his lover of ten years, Joe LeSueur, published a book this year called, Digression on Some Poems by Frank O’Hara.  His life was cut tragically short by a fatal beach buggy accident on the beach in Long Island at the age of 40.

Question: How does O’Hara’s style in this poem work for you?

How do you see his homosexuality in the poem?

Dr. White- Opera may be a mark of culture differences.  Whitman used to wear work shirts to things like the opera.

Jana- I though about Whitman a lot.  They both seem real.

Dr. White-  He has a strangely attractive personality

Ginger-  the title “My Heart” is very personal I like how he relates it to the end of the poem

Jana-  his heart is a way to express his gayness

Dr. White-  does not declare itself or is it coded.  In gay literature there is a “campy” feel.  The aesthetic  meaning of camp?

Jana-  It is also in BLBITW. He also goes back and forth with his feelings does he want to be feminine or masculine.  The “strain” line jumps out that way

Ginger-  “I don’t “– “I won’t”- is negative language.  Like in BLBITW that could be a common thing in gay literature

Martin-  is that why they are always depressed and sad?

Dr. White-  Well they can’t always say many things

Jana- the brown and grey suits or work shirts.  Does he want to be conservative or blue-collar

Ginger-  his bare feet and shaven face are opposites.  He is pulling back and forth

Jana- the opera is a place that you dress up.  There is no concept of casual

Toni- seeing he loves movies, maybe he wants to be unpredictable like a movie

Rosalyn- you know when a bad movie is going to be bad.  Even if it is not the best you know what you are getting going in to it.  O’Hara is like a bad movie

Jana-  his personality seems so open.  You get what you see.  But his poem is questioning.

Dr. White-  his attractive personality is in his style.  It leaves you wanting more

Jana-  anything that happens to him is fair game.  Telephone calls, everything is a poem. Pg 211 of BLBITW : black vs. gayness

Maybe the poem shouldn’t be read into too much.  Maybe it doesn’t have a deeper meaning.

Black pride vs. gay pride.  Society is never comfortable with gay pride

Dr. White- if you analyze it too much it gets frustrating.

Ashley-  is he bi-sexual?  Because it would make a perfect analogy, but it would be too obvious.

Jana-  I think he wants an androgynous feel

Tomasina-  Was coming out of the closet acceptable?

Jana- in his little artist’s world it was acceptable.  The rumor was you couldn’t get in to his little group, the poets group if you weren’t gay.  Reverse discrimination

Dr. White-  Lets go back to camp.  It is so bad that it is good.   Camping it up means loud or ostentatiously gay.  I would have learned the term screamer

Rosalyn and Jana-  flamers

Sergio- B- movies

Dr. White- bad movies form the 50’s like Imitation of Life.  Far from Heaven is done by a gay director, resurrecting movies from the 50’s.  Rock Hudson and Lana Turner.  Smoldering love scenes.  Passionate titles  like Not as a Stranger.  Fade out of bedroom scenes.  Coding, gay sub-culture could connect to operating under the surface the surface, but they do have flamboyantly passionate moments.  Now back to camp.

Jana-  BLBITW – using girls names instead of boys names, coding

Dr. White-  explicit reference to movies, very “campy” lines 3-6.  Everyone go see Far from Heaven.

Jana-  We haven’t talked about the freedom he had in his style because he was out of the dominant culture.  His style is like he is talking to someone

Dr. White- colloquial poetry.  Poem still everydayish.  Whitman faced same issues.  Go back to Ginger saying negative connotations are marking

Whitman also is marked that way and has this and that poems

New York substitutes for nature

Jana- one of his more famous poems is about Lana Turner falling down.  Aficionado and mess, I am good, I am bad.  Back and forth.  Disparaging himself and exalts himself next.