Studying Referentiality in Frank O'Hara's Poetry

Goals

Frank O'Hara acts in his poetry--he talks all about people and places. He references restaurants and bridges and statues in Manhattan. He talks about writers from all over. But what do all his references mean, if anything? Is there a way quantify the way O'Hara uses references in his poetry?

This site attempts to answer those questions. With a small collection of O'Hara's poems and paying close attention to the people, places, languages, and other noteworthy references, this site explores the referentiality of his work. O'Hara is a "New York" poet, but we can see exactly how often he references the city. We can see the frequency that he uses foreign languages.

This project is still in progress: since nine poems won't say much about these sorts of worldy questions, much compiling is yet to be done. The aim is to have at least one-hundred poems as a sample size, providing material for more questions. For example, can we notice any correlation between O'Hara's form (dropped lines, white space on the page, uniform stanzas) and his referentiality?

One of the goals from the outset of this project was to map both the places (and perhaps people) that O'Hara references. From the work done so far, that idea doesn't appear like it would yield provocative result--though that could easily change with a high volume of data. But, what the small sample size did reveal is that O'Hara really is a "New York" poet, and, moreover, he's a Manhattan poet. Wouldn't it be interesting if we could recreate a map of O'Hara's Manhattan?

Judging by the amount of research required to investigate some of O'Hara's references, there may be less known about O'Hara's Manhattan than people think. Perhaps that's because he's considered a modern poet, and people underestimate how much can change in fifty or sixty years. I know I did. Whatever the case, this project deserves a deep undertaking, and the findings of this research are embryonic to say the least.