Hyperscapes in the Poetry of Frank O'Hara: Difference, Homosexuality, Topography

Frank O’Hara’s poetry evokes a specific era and location: New York in the fifties and early sixties. This is a pre-computer age of typewritten manuscripts, small shops and lunch hours: it is also an age of gay repression, accelerating consumerism and race riots. Hazel Smith suggests that the location and dislocation of the cityscape creates "hyperscapes" in the poetry of Frank O’Hara. The hyperscape is a postmodern site characterized by difference, breaking down unified concepts of text, city, subject and art, and remolding them into new textual, subjective and political spaces. This book theorizes the process of disruption and re-figuration which constitutes the hyperscape, and celebrates its radicality. "In Hyperscapes in the Poetry of Frank O'Hara Hazel Smith creates new conceptual frameworks to articulate O'Hara's achievement and his impressive relevance to contemporary textual and political debates. Drawing on poststructuralist perspectives from postmodern geography to queer theory, Smith argues that O'Hara's poems are dynamic hyperscapes, sites of radical difference. In the hyperscape, body and city, modernist innovation and postmodern appropriation and high art and popular culture continuously morph and interpenetrate." "Smith also historicises O'Hara's hyperscapes in terms of the uptown-downtown milieu in which he lived, gay repression in pre-Stonewall America, the contending worlds of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art and the creative processes of jazz improvisation. The book includes new material from interviews with O'Hara's friends, analysis of manuscripts, and previously unpublished information about his collaborations."--Jacket Frank O'Hara's poetry evokes a specific era and location: New York in the fifties and early sixties. This is a pre-computer age of typewritten manuscripts, small shops and lunch hours: it is also an age of gay repression, accelerating consumerism and race riots. Hazel Smith suggests that the location and dislocation of the cityscape creates 'hyperscapes' in the poetry of Frank O'Hara. The hyperscape is a postmodern site characterised by difference, breaking down unified concepts of text, city, subject and art, and remoulding them into new textual, subjective and political spaces. This book theorises the process of disruption and re-figuration which constitutes the hyperscape, and celebrates its radicality. Title Page......Page 4 Contents......Page 6 Preface......Page 8 Introduction......Page 12 1: Resituating O’Hara......Page 20 2: The Hyperscape and Hypergrace: The City and The Body......Page 65 3: In Memory of Metaphor: Metonymic Webs and the Deconstruction of Genre......Page 91 4: The Gay New Yorker: The Morphing Sexuality......Page 113 5: The Poem as Talkscape: Conversation, Gossip, Performativity, Improvisation......Page 147 6: Why I Am Not a Painter: Visual Art, Semiotic Exchange, Collaboration......Page 177 Coda: Moving the Landscapes......Page 206 Appendix: More Collaboration......Page 208 Select Bibliography......Page 211 Index......Page 237 Machine generated contents note: 1 Resituating O'Hara 2 The Hyperscape and Hypergrace: The City and the Body 3 In Memory of Metaphor: Metonymic Webs and the Deconstruction of Genre 4 The Gay NewYorker: The Morphing Sexuality 5 The Poem as Talkscape: Conversation, Gossip, Performativity, Improvisation 6 Why I Am Not a Painter: Visual Art, Semiotic Exchange, Collaboration Coda: Moving the Landscapes Appendix: More Collaboration Select Bibliography Index. This Text Theorises The Process Of Disruption And Refiguration Which Constitutes The Hyperscape In Frank O'hara's Poetry. The Author Celebrates The Hyperscape's Radicality While Also Identifying It As A Forerunner To Postmodernism. Hazel Smith. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [200]-225) And Index.