Robert Hampson

Will Montgomery

The work of Frank O'Hara (1926–66) is central to any consideration of twentieth-century American poetry. Frank O'Hara Now, the first collection of essays to be dedicated to O'Hara in nearly two decades, asks why O'Hara remains so important to twenty-first-century readers and writers of poetry. For many, O'Hara's distinctive appeal depends on his witty depictions of urban experience, his relationship to the painters of abstract expressionism, and the exhilarating immediacy of his poetic voice. Yet these approachable qualities coexist with a demanding engagement with currents in European and American modernism. The book includes coverage of O'Hara moods that have rarely been discussed in the criticism to date, including boredom, hatred, and nihilism. Throughout, there is a powerful sense that fresh readings of O'Hara are crucial to understanding his continuing influence, making it essential reading for scholars and students of American poetry.

New Essays on the New York Poet

Frank O'Hara Now

Frank O’Hara’s writing is central to any consideration of 20th century American poetry. This collection of essays, the first to be dedicated to O’Hara in nearly two decades, asks why O’Hara remains so important to 21st century readers and writers of poetry. The book is transatlantic in tone, combining American scholarship with a wide sampling of British writers. For many, O’Hara’s distinctive appeal depends on his witty depictions of urban experience, his relationship to the painters of Abstract Expressionism and the exhilarating immediacy of his poetic voice. Yet these chatty and approachable qualities coexist with a testing engagement with currents in European and American modernism. Frank O’Hara Now offers a comprehensive picture of the poet, presenting the conversational insouciance of the writing alongside its more intransigent features.

Frank O’Hara Now

Lukewarm

Stephen Benson

A field recording is any audio recording made outside of the studio. Such recordings have lately become important to contemporary musicians, sound artists and environmentalists. However, less attention has been given to the relation of sound, as manifested in the theory and practice of the field recording, to writing. The 11 essays collected here take the recent explosion of interest in field recording as the point of departure for an investigation of the sounded field in music and its relationship to literature and writing. Including seminal pieces on field thinking by John Berger and Lisa Robertson, Writing the Field Recording analyses contemporary text scores, histories, composer statements, critical literature, poetry and nature writing in the context of sound studies. Drawing on expertise from a range of backgrounds, including composers, musicians, poets and critics, the collection presents an inter-disciplinary exploration of the various registers in which the field recording is written, such as the essayistic, the creatively exploratory, the experimental and the philosophical alongside critical reflections on artistic practice.

Will Montgomery

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