About
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Frank O’Hara grew up in Massachusetts and was a musician before he was a poet. He studied piano at the New England Conservatory from 1941 to 1944 and then served in World War II. After the war, O’Hara attended Harvard College, beginning his studies in music.
During his Harvard years, O’Hara became more interested in poetry, though he still loved music and especially contemporary music. He began writing poetry, became friends with John Ashbery, and started publishing his work in the Harvard Advocate. Though he still loved music (and especially contemporary music), O’Hara finished a degree in English at Harvard. After earning a Master of Arts at the University of Michigan, O’Hara moved to New York City.
New York became central to O’Hara’s poetry. O’Hara took a job at the front desk of the Museum of Modern Art and began writing prolifically. He became an important figure in the New York School of poets after his first volume of poetry, A City in Winter (1952), was published. Some of his other famous volumes of poetry include Meditations in an Emergency (1956) and Lunch Poems (1964).
O’Hara was friends with many painters, including Jasper Johns and Jackson Pollock. He died in a tragic sand buggy accident at the age of 40.
–Christie Finn
Source: Frank O’Hara’s entry in Poets.org
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Songs
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John Hollander
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Frank O’Hara
Dorothy Parker
Air
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Frank O’Hara
Song Collection: A Horse With Wings
For Poulenc
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From "Sneden's Landing Variations"
Virgil Thomson
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I Will Always Love You
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Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed)
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Song Collection: A Horse With Wings
Songs of Our Time
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Stanley Kunitz
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The Light Comes On By Itself
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Books
Sheet Music
50 Collected Songs
Composer(s): Ned Rorem
Song(s): Clouds
Love
Alleluia
The End
Chromatic Fantasy
For Susan
Orchids
Psalm 150
The Nightingale
Absalom
A Birthday
A Child Asleep in Its Own Life
Conversation
A Journey
The Land of Fear
Little Elegy
The Lordly Hudson
Nantucket
O Do Not Love Too Long
On a Little Bird
Poem for F.
The Serpent
Shelley's Vision
The Sick Wife
Spring (Hopkins)
Spring (Koch)
The Waking
What if some little pain...
While Sodom was occupied
A Glimpse
He Thinks Upon His Death
Philomel
Rain in Spring
You, the young Rainbow
Early in the Morning
Are you the new person?
Catullus: on the Burial of His Brother
Ferry me across the water
I strolled across an open field
I will always love you
Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair
Look down, fair moon
Love in a Life
On a Singing Girl
Sometimes with one I love
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Such beauty as hurts to behold
That shadow, my likeness
To a Young Girl
Visits to St. Elizabeths
Voice Type: High & Medium/Low
Buy via Sheet Music PlusA Horse With Wings
Composer(s): Ricky Ian Gordon
Song(s): Once I Was
Sweet Song
Afternoon on a Hill
My Sister's New Red Hat
A Horse with Wings
Air
Poem (Lana Turner has Collapsed)
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
The Spring and the Fall
Souvenir
Coyotes
The Red Dress
What Shall We Remember?
Will There Really Be a Morning?
Sycamore Trees
Fewer Words
The Special Picnic
Janet Underneath the Roses
I am a Cherry Alive
An Old-Fashioned Song
White Haired Woman
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Composer(s): Ricky Ian Gordon
Song(s): Virginia Woolf
Friend
Little Horse
Spell against Sorrow
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Pont Mirabeau
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This Room
If You Can
Aspen Tree
Three Floors
The Crazy Woman
Child
Dreams / Feet o' Jesus