Northshire Bookstore Northshire Bookstore
VIEW BASKET
SHIPPING
& RETURNS
CONTACT US
Established 1976 Northshire Bookstore
Hours: Sunday - Monday 10 am - 7 pm
Tuesday - Saturday 10 am - 9 pm
802-362-2200 · 800-437-3700
 
  Search
Browse Advanced Search Bestsellers Staff Picks Events e-Newsletter About Us Award Winners Northshire Selects Wish List
Books
Children's Books
Children's Gifts
DVD's
Gifts
Music
Print On Demand
Antiques
Architecture
Art
Audio Books
Bargain Books
Biography
Business
Computers
Cookbooks
Crafts
Diet & Nutrition
Gardening
Gender
Graphic Novels
Health
History
Horror
House & Home
Humor
Interior Design
Large Print
Literature & Fiction
Mind Body Spirit
Music
Mystery
Nature
New England
Performing Arts
Poetry
Psychology
Reference
Religion
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Small Gift Books
Sports
Transportation
Travel
Vermont
Affiliates
Employment
Donations
Privacy
Security
Help
Links

  Book Information

  

Lunch Poems
Ohara Frank
Poetry

Additional photos
Price: $7.95

Availability: 1

Paperback

ISBN/UPC: 9780872860353

ISBN-10: 0872860353

Published: 03/01/1964

Secure Shopping
Add to Cart

Add to Wishlist

Write your own review and share your opinion with other readers!
 
Northshire Bookstore Review(s)

Reviewed By... Michael Schiavo

Lunch Poems -- so-called because O'Hara wrote many of them on his lunch breaks when he worked at MoMA -- contains some of the poet's best-known work, such as "A Step Away From Them," "The Day Lady Died," "Personal Poem," "Ave Maria," and "Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed!]."

Frank O'Hara was, along with John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler, a leading member of what came to be known as the New York School of Poets. Closely associated with the Abstract Expressionist painters of the 1950s (and acting as a sort of alternative to the Beats), the New York School poets "favored wit, humor and the advanced irony of the blague (that is, the insolent prank or jest)" (David Lehman, The Last Avant-Garde).

O'Hara was an assistant curator as the Museum of Modern Art and wrote for Art News as well. Many of his poems have a jaunty, dashed off feeling that belies their Romantic leanings and intricate aesthetic and social arguments. Pop culture and his enormous circle of friends often enter O'Hara's "I-do-this, I-do-that" poems. The New York School sought to inject a spirit of irreverence and fun into poetry via their Surrealist influences that they felt was sorely missing in the mid-20th-century. In his famous mock-manifesto "Personism," O'Hara wrote: ". . . I don't even like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, 'Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.' "

 
©1999 - 2008 Northshire Information, Inc.
4869 Main Street Manchester Center, Vermont 05255
802-362-2200 • 800-437-3700