Frank O'Hara

Frank O'Hara was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1926, and grew up in Grafton, Massachusetts. He served in the US navy (1944-46) in the South Pacific, and attended the universities of Harvard and Michigan. In 1951 O'Hara settled in Manhattan, and soon became a central figure in a number of the city's artistic circles. For fifteen years he worked as an associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art, during which he became a passionate advocate of Abstract Expressionist painters such as William de...See more

Frank O'Hara was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1926, and grew up in Grafton, Massachusetts. He served in the US navy (1944-46) in the South Pacific, and attended the universities of Harvard and Michigan. In 1951 O'Hara settled in Manhattan, and soon became a central figure in a number of the city's artistic circles. For fifteen years he worked as an associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art, during which he became a passionate advocate of Abstract Expressionist painters such as William de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. O'Hara wrote an enormous quantity of poetry, little of which was published during his lifetime, but which was much admired by friends such as John Ashbery, Kenneth Kock and James Schulyler. He died on 25th July 1966, from injuries sustained in a beach-buggy accident on Fire Island. He is buried at Green River Cemetary on Long Island. His 'Collected Poems' was published in 1971, and won the National Book Award for Poetry. See less