March 27, 1926

Frank O'Hara (March 27, 1926 to July 25, 1966) was part of an artistic circle of painters and writers who took a shiny urban reality as their backdrop, and verbal complexity as a mode needing no justification. The criticism this circle produced was an extension of their art. O'Hara was at Harvard with Edward Gorey and John Ashbery in the late 1940s. 

It was to Ashbery that O'Hara sent the poem we reference. Titled "Madrigal for a Dead Cat Named Julia", this is the way it starts:


They never understand
she said they always want pictures
as at a dress rehearsal. O!
the castle is for playing nifty dreams to yourself
and thinking about asparagus soup.

O, this is no medicine to
drive away fear or ennui my cat
you have typhus and must die!
You are not just guilty of the castle rats' deaths
but you ate them afterwards my sick one.
....

His friends all got Pulitzers. But O'Hara, out for a walk at dawn on Fire Island Beach, was hit by a dune buggy, and died shortly thereafter. He could not make amends.