Frank O’Hara

Frank O’Hara is considered the quintessential New York School poet, along with his friends John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler. O’Hara was also an art critic and he wrote his book Lunch Poems during his lunch breaks while working at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. He was inspired by French poetry, especially Stéphane Mallarmé and Arthur Rimbaud, and his passionate appreciation for painting and jazz is evident in his poems. O’Hara died at 40 years old after being run over by a vehicle on Fire Island.