Frank O'Hara (1926–1966) was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and became a central figure in the New York School of poetry. Educated at Harvard University and the University of Michigan, he worked as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York while producing a body of poetry that engaged deeply with the city, with Abstract Expressionist painting, and with everyday life. His casual, conversational poems — attentive to the immediate moment — redefined lyric possibility. His collections include Lunch Poems (City Lights, 1964) and Meditations in an Emergency (Grove Press, 1957). He died at age forty following an accident on Fire Island. His Collected Poems won the National Book Award in 1972.