Having a Coke with You (Author Biography)

Author Biography

The first child of Russell J. and Katherine Broderick O’Hara, Francis Russell O’Hara, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on June 27, 1926. Shortly thereafter, the family moved to Grafton, Massachusetts, where his father managed the family’s three farms. Rural life, however, never appealed to O’Hara. He was drawn to the activity and energy of cities. “I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass,” he once wrote, “unless I know there’s a subway handy or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.” O’Hara’s first love was music. He began taking lessons at the age of seven and later studied piano at the New England Conservatory, nurturing a desire to become a concert pianist. After serving two years as a sonar operator on the destroyer U.S.S. Nicholas, O’Hara enrolled at Harvard University under the G.I. Bill of Rights. He first majored in music and then English literature. At Harvard, O’Hara made friends with a number of artists, musicians, and poets, including Edward Gorey, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, and James Schuyler. Later, the four were known as members of the New York School of Poets. Encouraged by poet and teacher John Ciardi, O’Hara enrolled at the University of Michigan and won a prestigious Hopwood Award for his poetry. He also received a master of arts degree in literature in 1951.

After graduating from the University of Michigan, O’Hara moved to New York City, working at a number of low-level jobs at the Museum of Modern Art. He began writing reviews for Art News before landing a position as special assistant to the director of MOMA’s (Museum of Modern Art) International Program. O’Hara befriended many artists and poets in the city. In particular, he became friends with Abstract Expressionist painters such as Jackson Pollock, Larry Rivers, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline. His knowledge and passion for the art world directly influenced his poetry. “Sometimes I think I’m in love with painting,” he once wrote. O’Hara’s reputation as a poet — already established in literary circles — burgeoned in 1957 with the publication of Meditations in an Emergency, his first book with a commercial press. That reputation became national in 1960 when Donald Allen published a large group of his poems in the ground-breaking anthology The New American Poetry, 1945 – 60, a book that poet and Beat cultural icon Allen Ginsberg described as “a great blow for liberty.” Other O’Hara poetry collections include Oranges (1953), Second Avenue

(1960), Odes (1960), and Lunch Poems (1965). Having a Coke with You was originally published the same year as Odes, appearing in a small press magazine called Love and then later in his collection entitled Love Poems (Tentative Title).

O’Hara was appointed associate curator for MOMA in 1965 and was in line to be promoted to full curator when, on July 25, 1966, he died after being hit by a dune buggy on Fire Island in New York the day before. The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, published posthumously and edited by Donald Allen, received the National Book Award in 1971.

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