Frank O'Hara

Unlike many of the other works we have read by other poets, I am still in the dark as to whether or not O’Hara himself is the speaker in his poems. Although he uses “I” in his writing, it is unclear as to whether or not “I” is him or another person that he is bringing to life. O’Hara like Plath, seems to be concerned with the creation of self in his poetry, yet unlike Plath’s poems, it does not seem that the experiences occurring in the first set of poems we read are happening to him. Sometimes I think that his writing is either meant to be a sort of play on words or a joke or even a criticism of other poets and people. For instance, in the poem “Autobiographia Literaria,” O’Hara gives his readers this childish and rather obscure outcry that seems Sylvia Plath like when he writes, “If anyone was looking for me I hid behind a tree and cried out ‘I’m an orphan.’” The images of these four lines create in the readers head remind one of the crazy and outlandish images that Plath’s poems create.

Later, in the second group of poems we read there is another reference or mimicking of another poet. In the poem, “To the Film Industry in Crisis” the very long and list like style of writing O’Hara uses is very similar to Whitman. These similarities seen in both poems seem to make me think that he is trying to utilize another person’s voice to either poke fun at that writer or to use the other writer’s voice to criticize society. Perhaps O’Hara is afraid to criticize another using his own voice, thus removing a somewhat personal aspect from his poetry. Rather than embodying the I in his poetry a sense of sarcasm and negativity is established instead.