Lovers of My Orchards: Writers and Artists on Frank O’Hara (1926-1966)

International audience“Lovers of My Orchards”: Writers and Critics on Frank O’Hara (1926-1966) pays tribute to one of the greatest American poets of the 20th century. In an early poem, Frank O’Hara wrote that he could only think of “the critic” as “the assassin / of [his] orchards.” The writers and artists whose contributions are gathered here give the lie to this somber metaphor as they engage with critical modes of reading poetry as supple and attentive to Frank O’Hara’s oeuvre as his poems were to the world and to his beloved New York City. Ranging from academic essays to practice-based criticism, the texts collected here provide multiple entry points into the work of the poet and reveal the extent of his influence on contemporary American letters and culture. FRANK O’HARA (1926-1966) was one of the most important American poets of the postwar era. A member of what is known as the “New York School of poetry,” Frank O’Hara was also an art critic, and at the time of his untimely death, a curator in the International Program of the Museum of Modern Art: sometimes nicknamed the “American Apollinaire,” O’Hara played a central role in the community of painters and writers in New York City. His Collected Poems were published posthumously by Alfred A. Knopf in 1971