Word: haras
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ASSISTANT EDITORS: Ursula Nadasdy de Gallo, Andrea Dorfman, Brigid O'Hara-Forster, William Tynan, Sidney Urquhart, Jane Van Tassel (Department Heads); Bernard Baumohl, David Bjerklie, Val Castronovo, Mary McC. Fernandez, Georgia Harbison, Ratu Kamlani, Sue Raffety, Susan M. Reed, Elizabeth Rudulph, Susanne Washburn, Linda Young...
While it may not offer the definitive statement on O'Hara's poetry, City Poet remains an lively presentation of a feverishly lived life. Gooch's intoxicating re-creation of O'Hara's milieu helps unlock some of the more insular references in his work (O'Hara once remarked to a friend on the small size of his audience: "You could fit the people I write for into your john all at the same time without raising an eyebrow"). Although O'Hara's poems to friends create an intimacy in which the reader can often share, Gooch's book adds...
Despite its frustrating gaps, City Poet generally remains close to its subject, to the emotional intricacies of what O'Hara called his "rococo self." Gooch has done a staggering amount of original research, and his book serves as a useful introduction to the intelligence and energy O'Hara brought to his life and poems...
...rest of O'Hara's life--the move to New York, the succession of affairs, the eventual job as curator at the Museum of Modern Art--was equally filled with the motion and sounds of colorful personalities, including Jackson Pollack, Larry Rivers, LeRoi Jones, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler and Allen Ginsberg. These sections of the biography are almost impossibly juicy, filled with gossipy anecdotes and discussions of trends in all the artistic genres with which O'Hara became involved...
...times, this broad canvas tends to obscure the nuances of O'Hara's art. Gooch provides a detailed account of the party, argument or museum exhibit which inspired a particular poem, but usually offers little analysis of the aesthetic or linguistic concerns the poem explores. In some ways, this approach befits a poet who compared his poems to unmade telephone calls, but the overall effect sometimes privileges O'Hara's role as social butterfly over that of poet...