Frank O'Hara

Frank O'Hara (1926–1966) was an American poet, art critic and curator, and a central figure of the New York School alongside John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch. Working by day at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara wrote poetry that fused everyday urban life in Manhattan with an improvisational, conversational energy, famously arguing that poetry should exist «between two persons instead of two pages» — a philosophy he called Personism.

His poems, often composed quickly during lunch breaks or while moving through the city, absorbed the texture of daily experience: phone calls, gossip, jazz, movie stars and street life, delivered with wit, immediacy and warmth. «Having A Coke With You» and «The Day Lady Died» (from his «Lunch Poems» period) exemplify this style, blending high and low culture without academic distance. His long poem «Steps» and manifesto «Personism: A Manifesto» remain touchstones for understanding his aesthetic.

O'Hara was deeply embedded in the New York art world, close with painters like Larry Rivers and Willem de Kooning, and his criticism helped shape the era's understanding of Abstract Expressionism. His sudden death in 1966 cut short a career that nonetheless left a lasting influence on generations of poets drawn to his casual, urbane, deeply human voice.