A Study of the Urban Poetics of Frank O’Hara


Book Description

Focusing on the poetry and cultural practice of Frank O’Hara, the great urban poet of the New York School during the 1950s and 1960s, this books explores the interwoven relationship between his urban poetics and the urban culture of New York, seeking to shed light on poetic concept and its cultural relevance. The poetry of Frank O’Hara is deeply rooted in and nourished by his urban experience as a metropolitan and an active participant in the vibrant cultural scene of New York. Therefore, an investigation into the interactive dynamics between his poetry and the urban culture he helped shape serves as a starting point for further study on the literary representation of European and American urban culture. Across eight chapters, the authors look into the genesis, theoretical constitution, the interface with culture and aesthetics of O’Hara’s urban poetics and also their philosophical foundations, literary ethics, special expression and representation as well as his reception of modernity and postmodernity. The title will appeal to scholars, students and general readers interested in American literature, poetry and urban culture, especially Frank O’Hara and the New York School.




Frank O’Hara Now


Book Description

Frank O’Hara’s writing is central to any consideration of 20th century American poetry. This collection of essays, the first to be dedicated to O’Hara in nearly two decades, asks why O’Hara remains so important to 21st century readers and writers of poetry. The book is transatlantic in tone, combining American scholarship with a wide sampling of British writers. For many, O’Hara’s distinctive appeal depends on his witty depictions of urban experience, his relationship to the painters of Abstract Expressionism and the exhilarating immediacy of his poetic voice. Yet these chatty and approachable qualities coexist with a testing engagement with currents in European and American modernism. Frank O’Hara Now offers a comprehensive picture of the poet, presenting the conversational insouciance of the writing alongside its more intransigent features.




Frank O'Hara


Book Description

A wonderful and essential collection of reviews and essays (many from now-defunct small magazines) on the poetry, as well as the prose and plays, of the great poet of the New York school, who died in 1966 at the age of 40. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Urban Pastoral


Book Description

"We knew Koch, Guest, O'Hara, Ashbery, and Schuyler thrived on the gritty, buoyant clank of city life, but that they drew from a secret fountain there only the Brill Building really let on, until now. In seven crisply argued, essayistic chapters, Gray lets us see and feel the invisible paradise glowing within the visible form of the subway, the skyscraper, the tenement bank, the tattoo parlor, a heaven ̀growing in the street/right up through the concrete, but soft and sweet and dreaming."---Kevin Killian, Author, Little Men --Book Jacket.




FRANK O'HARA Ultimate Collection: 100+ Poems in One Volume


Book Description

This carefully crafted ebook collection is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: Meditations in an Emergency: To the Harbormaster The eager note on my door... To the Film industry in Crisis Poem: "At night Chinamen jump" Blocks Les Etiquette jaunes Aus einem April River Poem: "There I could never be a boy" On Rachmaninoff's Birthday The Hunter For Grace, After a Party On Looking at "La Grande Jatte," the Czar Wept Anew Romanze, or The Music Students The Three-Penny Opera A Terrestrial Cuckoo Jane Awake A Mexican Guitar Chez Jane Two Variations Ode Invincibility Poem in January Meditations in an Emergency For James Dean Sleeping On The Wing Radio On Seeing Larry Rivers' "Washington Crossing the Delaware" at the Museum of Modern Art For Janice and Kenneth to Voyage Mayakovsky Lunch Poems: Music Alma On Rachmaninoff's Birthday I watched an armory On the Way to the San Remo 2 Poems from the Ohara Monogatari A Step Away from Them Cambridge Instant coffee with slightly sour cream Three Airs Image of the Buddha Preaching Is It Dirty The Day Lady Died Wouldn't it be funny Khrushchev is coming on the right day! Naphtha Personal Poem Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul Rhapsody Hotel Particulier Cornkind How To Get There A Little Travel Diary Five Poems Ave Maria Pistachio Tree at Chateau Noir At Kamin's Dance Bookshop Steps Mary Desti's Ass St. Paul and All That Memoir of Sergei O . . . . Yesterday Down at the Canal Poem en Forme de Saw For the Chinese New Year & For Bill Berkson Lana Turner Has Collapsed! Galanta Fantasy Other Poems: Yesterday Down at the Canal Noir Cacadou A Doppelgänger Green things are flowers too Entombment Today A Slow Poem V.R. Lang Animals Spleen Did You See Me Walking By The Buick Repairs? In Gratitude to Masters Hate Is Only One Of Many Responses Suppose that grey tree Steps Ann Arbor Variations Having A Coke With You At Joan's 1951 Melancholy Breakfast Digression On Number 1, 1948 A City Winter Poised and cheerful A Pathetic Note As Planned...




Spatial Poetics


Book Description

What is the relationship between the spaces we inhabit and the spaces we create? Does living in a messy downtown New York City apartment automatically translate to writing a messy New York School poem? This volume addresses the 'environment' of the urban apartment, illuminating the relationship between the structures of New York City apartments and that of New York School poems. It utilizes the lens of urban and spatial theory to widen the possibilities afforded by New Critical and reader-response readings of this postmodern American poetry. In drawing this connection between consciousness and form, it draws on various senses of the environment as informing influence, inviting avant-garde American poetry to be reconsidered as uniquely organic in its responsiveness to its surroundings. Focusing exclusively and comprehensively on Second Generation New York School poetry, this is the first book-length study to attend to the poetry of this postmodern American movement, encouraging American poetry scholars to resituate New York School poetry within larger critical narratives of postmodern innovation.




Dual Narrative Dynamics


Book Description

Combining narratological and stylistic methods, this book theorizes dual narrative dynamics consisting of plot development and covert progression and demonstrates the consequences for the interpretation of literary works. In narratives with such dynamics, writers work simultaneously with overt and covert trajectories of signification, establishing a range of relationships between them. The two parallel narrative movements may complement, contradict or even subvert each other, and these relationships significantly influence readers’ understanding not just of events but also of characters, themes, and aesthetic values. The book provides a systematic theoretical account of such previously neglected dual narrative dynamics, substantiated and enriched by the textual analysis of works by Ambrose Bierce, Kate Chopin, Franz Kafka, and Katherine Mansfield. The study explores the many ways that these authors have used dual dynamics to increase the power of their narratives. In addition, the book identifies the challenges such dual dynamics present not only for narratology but also for stylistics and translation studies, and it develops sound and provocative proposals for meeting those challenges. In taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book will appeal to scholars and students in the fields of narrative and literary theory, literary criticism, literary stylistics, and translation studies.




After Postmodernism


Book Description

This book engages with the critical decline of postmodernism and newer currents of thinking that have come to the fore, including postcolonialism, feminism, and cultural studies, constituting an exploration of the cultural landscape after the heyday of postmodernism in the West and its profound influence on the Chinese cultural scene. Topics discussed include the prevalent theoretical trends and cultural phenomena in the West in the wake of postmodernism, how these developments have influenced contemporary Chinese literary and cultural criticism, and how Chinese scholars can have an equal dialogue with the dominant Western theorists. The chapters examine critical issues and figures in the fields, including postmodernity and globalization, as well as the theories of Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Judith Butler. Taking a comparative and cross-cultural perspective, especially between China and the West, the title also sheds light on the imprint of Western theoretical trends on the literature and culture of contemporary China, exemplified in diasporic writing, cinema, women’s literature, popular culture, and the overall orientation of contemporary Chinese literature. The book will be a critical reference for all levels of reader interested in postmodernism, critical theory, postcolonialism, feminism, cultural studies, comparative and world literature, and contemporary Chinese literature and culture.




Poems Retrieved


Book Description

A reissue of this classic, essential companion to Frank O'Hara's Collected Poems, with a new introduction by Bill Berkson.




Literature and Power


Book Description

With references to the theoretical framework of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, this book offers a critical investigation into such epic issues as the end of art and the inherent laws of literature’s evolution, while conflating the two into one major argumentation. The book proceeds from Hegel's claim of "the end of art" to tackle the universal yet essential problem of literature: its legitimacy in a sociological sense. It invests Bourdieu’s sociological terms -- power, capital, habitus, field, etc. into the study of literature and art while taking on other theoretical enquiries, particularly the Marxist exploration into ideology, as well as aspects of economics and communication studies. This book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of the sociology of literature, cultural studies, and those with specific interests in Chinese literature, literary and art theory.