Also a Poet

This is my favorite kind of non-fiction book—a failure. Which is to say that it isn't a biography of the influential mid-century poet Frank O'Hara, although it's full of biographical detail and wise analysis of his life and work. It also doesn't offer definitive answers about the fraught relationship between distant fathers and their underappreciated offspring, although it provides a perfect example in the form of the uneasy rapport between art critic Peter Schjeldahl and his dutiful, accomplished daughter, Ada Calhoun. It does succeed brilliantly at bringing these elements together, as the author relates her attempts to resuscitate the project her father abandoned almost fifty years ago. It sent me back to O'Hara's Lunch Poems, and to Schjeldahl's collection Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, and it made me glad that failures of one kind can be triumphs on other terms. Brava, Ada. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter)