[It is] my growing conviction that O'Hara is one of the central poets of the postwar period, and that his influence will continue to grow in the years to come. He is also an important art critic, his improvisatory but incisive essays and reviews recalling those of an earlier poet-art critic whom he loved—Apollinaire. And his collaborations with painters, composers, playwrights, and film-makers have given us some of the most delightful mixed-media works of the fifties and sixties. (p. xii)

The notion of being "needed by things" … is a central feature of [O'Hara's] poetic. It derives, quite possibly, from Rilke, whose poetry O'Hara knew well and loved…. For both Rilke and O'Hara, it is the artist's "duty to be attentive" to the world of process in which he finds himself. And such attention requires a peculiar self-discipline, the ability to look at something and, paraphrasing Ezra Pound...