How O'Hara includes musicians and composers into his poetry and how this allows the writing to have a more musical origin.
Given O'Hara's background in music, it's no surprise that his poetry is riddled with allusions to composers and musicians throughout his works. Music was the basis of O'Hara's poetic vision since the beginning, and music shaped O'Hara's thinking throughout his career.
One of O'Hara's best known poems is "The Day Lady Died". It is about the death of the singer Billie Holiday. It is no coincidence that this poem, which is about a musician, has a certain musicality about it.
"The Day Lady Died" opens by saying that "it is 12:20" on a "Friday", that it is "three days after Bastille day", "it is 1959", and that the narrator "will get off the 4:19" at 7:15. These conflicting time frames are all twisted together, which makes it difficult to map where in time and space the poem is taking place. This tactic shows the reader the inadequacy of chronology when listening to Billie Holiday's performance at the end of the poem.
A reading of "The Day Lady Died" by Frank O'Hara can be viewed below:
"Personal Poem" describes O'Hara receiving the news of the death of Miles Davis, the jazz trumpeter and compsoer. It reads:
"and LeRoi comes in and tells me Miles Davis was clubbed 12 times last night outside birdland by a cop. (O'Hara)
One of O'Hara's lesser known poems, "The Tomb of Arnold Schoenberg", has many references to music contained within it. It describes a "pianoforte of celestial hazard", "spherical music", and Schoenberg as being the "father of sound whose harp's fallen to earth". The complete text is below:
THE TOMB OF ARNOLD SCHOENBERG The avalanche drifts to earth through giant air your pure monument's loud windless blizzard, pianoforte of celestial hazard strangling the swans of peach with arms of hair, father of sound whose harp's fallen to earth in bitterness and snows of savage age. Ice silences your noble eyes, image of spring, thus my tears your death gives to birth over Pacific pines and the blue crouch of the setting world. This birth screams in gaze blind with art's crushing defeat. The dull roar of incessant soldiers muffles the touch of spherical music with brutal lays. I weep upon your bier, this glacial shore. (O'Hara)
In "Ode to Michael Goldberg ('s Birth and Other Births)", O'Hara describes the wind sounding exactly like Stravinsky. He also gives his perspective on art, even more specifically music, by stating that:
"I first recognized art as wildness, and it seemed right" (O'Hara)
O'Hara also wrote seven different poems titled "On Rachmaninoff's Birthday". The Rachmaninoff in these poems is the Russian composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff. As mentioned in an earlier post, O’Hara was a gifted pianist who was reaching for a career in music before dedicating himself fully to poetry during college. During his time as a music major, he enjoyed tackling Rachmaninoff’s extremely complex pieces.
Brad Gooch mentions in City Poet that “during O’Hara’s senior year a story circulated at Harvard that he had played once for Rachmaninoff at the New England Conservatory and that the Russian pianist and composer had advised him that his hands were too small for ultimate success.”
O'Hara referenced this story in one of the "On Rachmaninoff's Birthday" poems, stating:
Good fortune, you would have been my teacher and I your only pupil…. Only my eyes would be blue as I played and you rapped my knuckles dearest father of all Russias. (O'Hara)
Gooch continues, “While such a session may never have taken place, the conclusion that he was physically unsuited to excel at a concert hall career helped to dissuade O’Hara from a career in music.”
A list is provided below that shows many of the poems that mention a famous composer or musician:
"The Day Lady Died" - Billy Holiday
"Personal Poem" - Miles Davis
"On Rachmaninoff's Birthday" series - Sergei Rachmaninoff
"The Tomb of Arnold Schoenberg" - Arnold Schoenberg
"The Spoils of Grafton" - Felix Mendelssohn
"Three Penny Opera" - Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill
"Lisztiana" - Franz Liszt
"Glauzunovania" - Alexander Glazunov
"Wind"* - dedicated to Morton Feldman and set to music by Feldman twice
"Poem Read at Joan Mitchell's" - Mortie (Morton) Feldman
"Ode to Michael Goldberg ('s Birth and Other Births) - Igor Stravinsky and Felix Mendelssohn
"To Jane, in Imitation of Coleridge" - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
"Mozart Chemisier" - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
"Radio" - Edvard Grieg, Arthur Honneger, Sergei Prokofieff
"Statue" - Maurice Ravel
"Leafing Through Florida" - Gustav Mahler
"Ode to Joseph LeSueur" - Aaron Copland's "Piano Fantasy"
"Macaroni" - Maria Callas
"The 'Unfinished'" - Leonard Bernstein and Pablo Casals
"Naphtha" - Duke Ellington
"To the Music of Paul Bowles" - Paul Bowles
"For the Chines New Year" - Jean Sibelius
"For Poulenc" *- Francis Poulenc
* "Wind" and "For Poulenc" are further discussed in the "Musicality of Frank O'Hara's Poetry" post.
In his memoir, LeSueur points out that the dream of being a musician never entirely left O’Hara. He says,
“I truly believe that Frank’s early desire and ambition to be a pianist remained with him throughout his life, not in any practical or realistic sense but as a dream or fantasy one stubbornly clings to, knowing all the while that what one longs for has always been out of reach, never obtainable.” (Epstein)
And this couldn't be more true. It's as if O'Hara hides these Easter eggs in his poems that reference his earlier life when his dream was to be a concert pianist.This is done through both allusions to musicians and references to his earlier life as a musician.
