SOURCE: Stein, Kevin. “‘Everything the Opposite’ of History.” In Private Poets, Worldly Acts, pp. 43-56. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Stein explores O’Hara’s break from literary tradition and places him in the context of the 1950s.

It may seem surprising to include within a study of “history” in contemporary poetry a poet who would seem deliberately and assiduously to refuse the public in favor of the private. True enough, O'Hara, more than most American poets, shows a fondness for spritzing his poems with references to friends and events in his life, implicitly valuing the personal over the communal experience. It is precisely this choice of the personal that interests me, not only for its aesthetic but also its historical implications. O'Hara's privileging of private over “objective” history stems from his vital opposition to another kind of history: literary history. By 1964, when Frank O'Hara's...