31 pages • 1 hour read
Frank O'HaraAve Maria
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1964A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Background
Authorial Context
“Ave Maria” was published in 1964 when Frank O’Hara was in his thirties and an active member of the arts scene in New York. He was an unapologetic cinephile, a passion that appeared in numerous poems including this one and “To the Film Industry in Crisis” (1957), “In the Movies” (1954), and “A Step Away from Them” (1964). Although he is remembered today for his poetry, it is clear that cinema was his first love. He’s been widely quoted as saying, “And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies.” “Ave Maria” is one of O’Hara’s most famous poems because it champions his love of, reliance on, and growth born out of going to the cinema. No other poet has become as widely associated with the bridge between cinema and poetry—and perhaps the bridge between all aspects of the arts communities—than Frank O’Hara.
Another reason the relationship between the poet and this work is particularly relevant is because Frank O’Hara’s was a gay man at a time when it was still illegal across almost all of the United States (Illinois became the first state to overturn anti-gay laws in 1962, but the next state wouldn’t follow until 1971; homosexuality remained illegal in the state of New York until 1980). For him and many others like him, cinemas became a place to explore desire in the dark in relative safety. This is alluded to in “Ave Maria” with the line “and didn’t upset the peaceful home” (Line 15).
It wasn’t until he met Edward Gorey at Harvard—who would become an influential friend, though never a lover—that O’Hara began to accept that hidden part of himself. Even as gay rights movements began to spread and underground subculture communities formed across the country, O’Hara likely would have remembered cinemas as that first place where he could explore dark self-expression, or “the darker joys” (Line 30), and he hoped that other young people could experience it too.
Cultural Context
“Ave Maria” is loosely ekphrastic, which means it honors another work of art. Generally, an ekphrastic poem examines one artwork in particular, such as a film, sculpture, or painting; O’Hara’s poem, however, and many of the poems in his repertoire, honor the cinematic art form as a whole. This is an appropriate reflection of O’Hara’s place in the New York School arts community and his life as an artist.
He was initially trained as a concert pianist and later went on to become a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Music, visual art, and of course film played a constant role in his life. Many of O’Hara’s closest friends and lovers were painters or other visual artists, such as the painters Jane Freilicher and Larry Rivers, the latter of which would become one of O’Hara’s most constant romantic partners. In 1968, two years after O’Hara’s death, the Museum of Modern Art published a volume called In Memory of My Feelings. It contained 30 of O’Hara’s poems and illustrations by visual artists from O’Hara’s personal life. This volume perfectly encompassed the cross-genre artistic community in which O’Hara played an active role and the larger trend of breaking down boundaries between artistic lifestyles and mediums. The New York School in particular—which encompassed poets, painters, dancers, musicians, and performers—were well-known for cross-medium collaboration and for inspiring works of art in each other.
Looking back across time as students, educators, and historians, it’s all too easy to compartmentalize art into a mosaic of distinct, individual movements; O’Hara and his friends teach us that art is blurry, the edges of one art form often bleed into and influence another.
