SOURCE: A review of Frank O'Hara: Poet among Painters, in Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 77, No. 2, April, 1978, pp. 299–301.

In the following review of Frank O'Hara: Poet among Painters, Altieri commends Perloff's discussion of O'Hara's aesthetics, but cites shortcomings in her analysis of the subjective qualities of O'Hara's work.

Marjorie Perloff's description of Frank O'Hara's poetic career and its context, the New York art scene of the 1950's, is a pleasure to read. Clearly and energetically written, [Frank O'Hara] is informative without pedantry and subtle without excessive ingenuity.

Professor Perloff's major achievement is making clear and concrete the way O'Hara employs the principles of various modes of nonrepresentational painting in order to break away from the “neo-Symbolist” mode dominating American poetry in the 1950's. O'Hara's aim is “‘to keep the surface of the poem high and dry, not wet, reflective and self-conscious’” and to make the poem...