The Exploration of the Secret Smile

This study of the work of the New York poet Frank O'Hara (1926-1966) emphasizes a largely overlooked aspect of O'Hara's poetics: the aspect of the urban homosexual, or gay, experience. It also emphasizes his frequent fusion of the aesthetics of poetry with the aesthetics of the visual arts. Revealing the importance of the deliberately (given the societal mood of the '50s and '60s) sedimented homosexual meaning in O'Hara's poetry, as well as the importance of the art of the Abstract Expressionists, The Exploration of the Secret Smile offers a new outlook on the congruence of his poetic canon.