FRANK O HARA

Frank O''Hara (1926-66) is among the most delightful and radical poets of the twentieth century. He is celebrated for his apparently unpremeditated poems, autobiographical and immediate (''any time, any place''). This is not the whole O''Hara: he may have scribbled poems on serviettes, but others he worked on with intense concentration, creating sequences that are inexhaustibly nuanced, full of surprise, heartbreak and laughter. There are analogies between his work and that of the painters he championed, Pollock, Kline and de Kooning among them. He is resolutely metropolitan, and his metropolis is New York City. He brilliantly captured the pace and rhythms, quandaries and exhilarations, of its mid-twentieth-century life. ''Wonderful, original poems... He was an essential contact-man between the worlds of painting and poetry. And he suggested a rich and fascinating dialogue between them.'' Eavan Boland ''O''Hara''s hip, glamorous, freewheeling self-celebrations both reflected and helped disseminate a new kind of confidence and daring in American poetry.'' Mark Ford

For the first time, The New York Poets gathers in a single volume the best work of four extraordinary poets: Frank O''Hara, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler. By the early 1950s all four were settled in Manhattan, collaborating, competing and encouraging each other''s radical experiments with language and form. Much of their work reflects their participation in the creative energies of the New York art scene, ''the floods of paint'', to quote James Schuyler, ''in whose crashing surf we all scramble''. Believing that anything could be material for a poem, they transformed American poetry with their irreverent wit and daring. Mark Ford''s anthology is an essential introduction to four poets whose work has influenced poetry around the world. It includes detailed background information and a substantial bibliography.

«Són les 12:40 d’un dijous a Nova York, i Frank O’Hara surt del MoMA a fer un mos pels carrers fumejants de Midtown. Entre transeünts atrafegats, els obrers descansen amb la coca-cola a la mà, els ta