Artistic Transgressions in Frank O'Hara's Poetry

This essay will focus on a main characteristic of O’Hara’s aesthetics: its ungraspable nature, or, in other words, „the betweenness” (Magee 704). It is almost impossible to put him into a category, because he always erases the boundaries between totally different qualities. If there existed a constantly mixed, constantly changing definition, that would be proper for his poetry. That is to say, his aesthetics cannot really be pinned down to any one aspect. When I want to make a single statement about his poetics, I have to be extremely careful. I find the binary oppositions in his poetry so essential that they will determine the structure of my essay. The title of my chapters will always be two opposing categories from which O’Hara was not inclined to choose: he is either in both of the different categories, or in neither of them; and it is all the same. The chapters will address the issue of mixed-media games: painting and literature; cinema and poetry; then music and literature. It is not surprising that O’Hara made experiments by mixing different branches of art. He worked as the Associate Curator in the Department of the Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; he was keen on motion pictures and admired jazz music as well.egyetemiangol nyelv és irodalo