Frank O?Hara?s Libidinal Topography and the Nativity of an Orphic Poet

This essay maps the libidinal landscape that characterizes Frank O'Hara's journey of maturation in his poem "Ode to Michael Goldberg ('s Birth and Other Births)." Written to celebrate the abstract expressionist painter Michael Goldberg's birthday in 1957, the poem also serves as a chronicle of the development of O'Hara's own poetic mind. Evoking William Wordsworth's "Intimations" ode, O'Hara exploits the Thanatos-Eros nexus of the pastoral elegy and its restorative pattern of loss and recompense to delineate the progressive states of his soul, his artistic and sexual awakenings. This essay delves into the way the poet's preoccupation with death is superimposed on the eroticized pastoral rendering of his personal memory, demonstrating how the pastoral elegy's ceremonial function enables O'Hara to enact a poetic self-initiation rite that marks the passages from one status to another.