[Wgcp-whc] WG/CP--Fri 9/26 O'Hara Session

[richard.deming at yale.edu]

Dear All--

just a reminder that the first session of the WG/Contemporary Poetics will be on
Friday Sept 26 from 3-5 in Whitney Humanities Center, Rm 116.  For our first
session, the only one this semester not tied to a visitor coming to join us--we
will discuss the work of Frank O'Hara.  The group has purchased 16 copies of the
just published Selected Poems (edited by Mark Ford) for members.  As of
yesterday there are only 6 left--so I wouldn't delay much longer in picking up
a copy.  These are available on a first come, first served basis and can be
found on a shelf opposite the door in WHC Rm 116.  These are offered to anyone
who is interested and who will be bale to make that session on the 26th.

To focus our attention on that Friday, I've compiled a list of poems from
various suggestions and requests by group members that we might foreground.  I
will paste the titles below--and this way anyone using either the Collected
Poems or the earlier selected poems (edited by Donald Allen) will be able to
refer to the appropriate pages in those volumes.

Also, to supplement our reading and to provide context I have assembled some
useful links.  The first two offer video and audio of O'Hara writing.  Given
O'Hara's emphasis on the personal and on a kind of poetic intimacy, it is
especially useful to have a sense of him in the flesh, so to speak.

http://www.frankohara.org/video/usapoetry.html
http://www.frankohara.org/audio.html


Marjorie Perloff, one of the foremost critics of contemporary poetry, wrote a
seminal study of O'Hara.  The introduction of this book is available on line. 
It gives a terrific sense of the changing critical reception of O'Hara.

http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/perloff/ohara.html

A very strong example of some recent scholarship on O'Hara comes from Lytle
Shaw.  A portion of his recent book on O'Hara (Frank O'Hara: The Poetics of
Coterie) first appeared in the online journal Jacket.

http://jacketmagazine.com/10/shaw-on-ohara.html

And for those members "at large," I provide a link to an online version of Mark
Ford's introduction to the new O'Hara selected poems.

http://www.poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_ford.php


We should aslo include in our discussion some of O'Hara's essays on poetics,
including his famous "Personism: A Manifesto." These are appended to Ford's
selection.  These essays are short, breezey, and of great importance to post
WWII American poetry


As ever,
Richard Deming, Coordinator


Poems:
Homosexuality
Walking to Work
Meditations in an Emergency
Mayakovsky
To the Harbormaster
Why I Am Not a Painter
Metaphysical Poem
The Day Lady Died
Rhapsody
Avenue A
Lana Turner Has Collapsed
"In Memory of My Feelings"
You Are Gorgeous and I Am Coming

& of course any others of interest--the above list is only a set of possible
suggestions.