Early in the morning on July 24, 1966, around 3am, Frank O’Hara was hit by a dune buggy on the beach at Fire Island. He died in the hospital the next night, July 25, at 8:50pm. J.J. Mitchell’s description of the accident and rush to save O’Hara’s life, including what appeared to be his temporary recovery, is recounted in “The Death of Frank O’Hara,” an elegant, moving piece that appears in Homage to Frank O’Hara, edited by Bill Berkson and Joe LeSueur. [...] The reproductions of O’Hara’s collaborations with Joe Brainard are really amazing, including one where O’Hara has written in a speech bubble next to a butterfly “I’m not really flying—I’m thinking!”
"CRYING IN A SLOW WIND": TED BERRIGAN & JIM BRODEY ON THE DEATH & FUNERAL OF FRANK O'HARA (Nick Sturm)
“...and no poet has escaped the charge Frank O’Hara’s poems has generated. In one brief poem, “The Day Lady Died,” he seemed to create a whole new kind of awareness of feeling, and by this a whole new kind of poetry, in which everything could be itself and still be poetry.”
Ted Berrigan in the East Village Other, August 1966 (pictured)
