Some stories begin with curiosity, but end up uncovering something far more personal. This is exactly what happens in Also a Poet, a memoir that starts with an attempt to write a biography of the iconic New York poet Frank O’Hara and quickly turns into something deeper: a tender, layered exploration of family, legacy, and longing. As the author, Ada Calhoun, revisits her father’s abandoned project on O’Hara, she begins to unravel not just the threads of the poet’s life, but the tangled emotional fabric between herself and her father. What she finds is a complicated inheritance—intellectual, emotional, and creative—that forces her to examine what it means to tell someone else’s story, and in the process, understand your own.
The Biography That Wasn’t Meant to Be
At first glance, the memoir begins with a straightforward idea: to write the biography of Frank O’Hara, the magnetic mid-century poet whose spontaneous, vivid verses captured the spirit of New York City. But almost immediately, the project is met with resistance. The guardians of O’Hara’s estate, especially his sister, refuse to grant permission to quote his poetry—effectively blocking any traditional biography. This rejection is a mirror of the same roadblock her father encountered decades earlier when he too had tried to write about O’Hara. His effort, ambitious and passionate, had never been completed.But this setback doesn’t end the journey—it transforms it. The failure to gain access becomes the foundation for a more personal story, one about the complicated layers of influence. As she sifts through his old cassette tapes and notes, the project slowly morphs. It’s no longer just about O’Hara—it’s about understanding her father’s fascination with him, and what that says about their shared hunger for artistic recognition. The search becomes about what his legacy meant to her father, and how this unfinished project symbolized much more than just a missed opportunity.Rather than a straight biography, the story becomes a winding path of discovery. Calhoun listens to her father’s interviews with artists, poets, and critics who knew O'Hara—conversations filled with warmth and laughter that feel like strange echoes of the man she remembers growing up with. Her father was clearly charming and beloved in certain circles, and she couldn’t help but notice that although her father admired and imitated parts of O’hara, the affectionate, child-loving openness that the tapes reveal was absent at her home. These tapes act like time capsules, giving access not only to O'Hara's world but also to a version of her father she never fully knew.In this sense, the failed biography becomes a gateway—an accidental opportunity to explore two intertwined lives. Frank O’Hara, the poet whose openness was legendary, becomes a kind of ghostly third presence in this father-daughter story. And in chasing his story, she begins to see the gaps in her father’s story too. The biographical attempt may have failed in the traditional sense, but it succeeds in revealing something far more valuable: how the act of writing about others can turn into a deeper understanding of ourselves.Now let's meet the man at the center of this story - a poet whose life was as colorful as the words he wrote.
Frank O’Hara: The Poet Everyone Wants to Claim
Frank O’Hara wasn’t just a poet—he was a sensation. Part of the New York School, his poetry felt like a caffeinated stroll through the city, filled with wit, spontaneity, and a deep affection for daily life. He wrote with the freedom of someone who wasn’t trying to please anyone, and his work often read like a fast-paced letter to a friend. That energy made him a legend. Even decades after his untimely death, O’Hara remains a touchstone for those in search of authenticity and artistic courage.But that very magnetism is what makes him so difficult to access. The people who knew him—friends, colleagues, lovers—each seemed to have their own version of who he was. But even then, he remains a fiercely protected figure. The guardians of his legacy—particularly his sister and estate—act like sentinels, wary of outsiders. The difficulty of accessing permission to quote his work becomes symbolic of something larger: the tension between public art and private control.This struggle becomes a core theme of the book. It’s not just about copyright or permissions—it’s about control, interpretation, and legacy. O’Hara’s poetry, which once felt like a public offering, is now fenced off, protected with legal barriers. The irony is sharp: a poet whose charm came from his openness has become boxed in by bureaucracy.Yet even through these limitations, his presence looms large. The stories people tell about him—often spontaneous and joyful—suggest a man who defied easy definition. He was a poet who didn’t fit the mold, a gay man in a conservative era, an arts administrator who didn’t care for hierarchy, and a writer who valued friendship as much as form. His work was filled with everyday moments, capturing conversations, emotions, and fleeting experiences with immediacy and warmth.It’s this sense of aliveness that makes O’Hara such a compelling figure. His poetry isn't just read—it’s felt. And that emotional impact doesn’t fade with time. In the memoir, O’Hara’s work becomes more than just a subject of study—it becomes a kind of spiritual glue, binding together the father’s ambitions and the daughter’s longing. His poetry becomes a language they both understand, even if they never spoke it to each other.By trying to write about O’Hara, the author isn’t just chasing a story—she’s reaching for a connection, both to the poet and to her father. And in that pursuit, O’Hara becomes less a person and more a symbol: of freedom and of artistic...
The Father She Thought She Knew
The heart of this memoir doesn’t belong to Frank O’Hara alone—it belongs to the relationship between a father and daughter, one shaped by admiration, distance, and misunderstanding. Calhoun’s father was a well-known art critic, witty and charismatic in public, but often difficult and emotionally distant at home. Growing up in the shadow of someone so deeply immersed in the art world meant being constantly surrounded by brilliance—but not necessarily affection.
As she begins to uncover a side of him she rarely saw, it forces her to question the man she thought she knew. How could someone who seemed so attentive to strangers be so indifferent at home? The answer isn’t simple, but it becomes a key part of her journey.
What makes this dynamic even more complicated is their shared passion for writing. Both father and daughter pursued careers in words, though in different ways. He operated in the highbrow world of art and criticism; she found her path through more personal, reflective work. Yet this shared vocation didn’t bring them closer—it sometimes felt like a competition. His unfinished O’Hara project hangs over the book like a shadow, a symbol of both his ambition and his inability to finish things. When she picks it up, it feels like stepping into his shoes—and into the parts of him she never fully understood.
But this isn’t a story of bitterness. It’s more about reconciliation—not through confrontation, but through discovery. By studying his work and retracing his steps, she begins to understand the pressure he lived under: the need to be relevant, the fear of being forgotten, the exhaustion that comes with always performing intelligence. He was a man who gave his best to the world and saved his worst for the people closest to him. That doesn’t excuse the pain he caused, but it helps explain it.
In a way, this emotional excavation becomes the most important biography in the book—not of Frank O’Hara, but of her father. And in writing about him, she also writes about herself—the daughter of a critic, the child of an artist, and a woman trying to make peace with the ghosts that shaped her.
And with that, let's pull back the curtain on the myth of the artistic life and see what's really happening backstage.
The Messy Truth Behind Artistic Lives
There’s a common myth about creative people—that their lives are charmed, their days filled with inspiration, passion, and brilliance. But this memoir chips away at that illusion, revealing a more complex reality. Both O’Hara and the father at the center of the story lived lives full of beauty and insight, but also of chaos, insecurity, and fragility.
Frank O’Hara was a man of contradictions. He worked at the Museum of Modern Art, helped shape American postwar art, and hosted spontaneous, glamorous parties. His poetry celebrated life in all its messy, fleeting glory. But he also struggled with loneliness. His death—hit by a dune buggy on Fire Island at just 40 years old—felt as sudden and surreal as his poetry.
The father’s life was also steeped in art, but not without its shadows. He was brilliant, driven, and well-respected. Yet he often drank too much, burned bridges, and left projects half-finished. His obsession with legacy—his own and O’Hara’s—came with a kind of emotional toll that was hard to ignore. The burden of being someone’s idea of “great” can crush the desire to be present, kind, or emotionally available. And for his daughter, growing up in the wake of that brilliance often felt more like surviving a storm than basking in light.
What becomes clear is that being an artist doesn’t shield you from pain—it often intensifies it. Creativity can be a gift, but it’s not always a cure. The people who bring the most beauty into the world are often the ones who struggle most privately. This is a story not just about art, but about what it costs to make it. The memoir doesn’t shy away from that complexity—it embraces it.
By showing the flaws and contradictions in these two artistic lives, the book paints a more honest picture of artistic pursuits. There’s an underlying question about what it means to live for your art, and whether legacy is worth the pain it often leaves behind. It's not a romanticized portrait, but a sobering one—filled with beauty, but also with cracks. And capturing this cracked beauty is all about the art of memory.
Memory, Permission, and the Limits of Truth
Every biography is a little bit fiction. So, writing a biography—especially of someone long gone—is never just about gathering facts. It’s about interpretation, negotiation, and the ever-slippery nature of memory. This memoir highlights just how challenging it is to piece together a life when everyone remembers it differently and when the people guarding that legacy want to shape it their own way.
Adding to this complexity is the unreliability of personal memory. Calhoun finds her sources contradicting themselves, offering differing portraits of O’Hara depending on their closeness, perspective, or perhaps even the mood they were in. Memory, it turns out, is malleable—colored by love, resentment, nostalgia, or regret. Even recorded conversations aren’t immune; they capture voice and tone but not always the deeper emotional truths.
And it’s not just about O’Hara’s memory. The father’s story, too, is subject to these distortions. As she tries to understand his intentions, his choices, and the things he left unsaid, the memoir becomes a meditation on how we remember those closest to us. Childhood memories clash with public perceptions. Even her own feelings fluctuate—sometimes protective, sometimes hurt, sometimes both.
What we remember—and what we choose to forget—becomes part of the story itself. The act of writing a biography becomes a lesson in humility: you can chase facts forever and still come up short. All of this reveals a deeper truth: telling someone else’s story is inherently flawed. It’s shaped not only by what’s known, but also by what’s felt. By who’s telling it, and why. And yet, despite these imperfections, there’s value in trying. The act of writing, of remembering, of piecing together fragments—even if they don’t all fit—becomes its own kind of tribute. A way to say, “You mattered.” Not just to history, but to someone who is still trying to understand where she comes from.
In this way, the memoir becomes more than a reconstruction of two lives. It becomes a reflection on storytelling itself—the impossibility of complete truth, and the beauty of honest effort. Because sometimes the real story isn’t the one that’s told perfectly—it’s the one told with heart.
Here's where the road loops back to the beginning, but now everything looks different.
The Story That Ends Up Being Your Own
As the pages turn and the search continues, the central narrative shifts in an unexpected but powerful direction. What began as a literary quest to finish her father’s biography of Frank O’Hara quietly transforms into something more intimate—a memoir not of someone else’s life, but of her own evolution through that pursuit.This transformation happens gradually. At first, the focus is on filling in the gaps of the unfinished project, honoring her father’s intellectual legacy while perhaps proving something to herself along the way. But as the research deepens and emotional layers begin to surface, the work becomes increasingly personal. In trying to honor O’Hara and understand her father, the author finds her own creative footing. Instead of writing about someone else, she begins writing through them—using their stories to understand her own.This isn’t always a comfortable process. There’s frustration in hitting roadblocks, sadness in rediscovering emotional wounds, and a lingering sense of incompletion that mirrors her father’s original failure. But there’s also clarity. In navigating these challenges, she begins to find her voice—not the echo of her father’s or the historical voice of a poet, but her own. A voice that embraces vulnerability, uncertainty, and the beauty of the unfinished.The book becomes, in its final form, a mosaic of connection: between past and present, between a daughter and her father, and between two people—O’Hara and the father—who never met but somehow shared an artistic soul. She doesn’t complete the biography her father set out to write. But in the process of trying, she creates something arguably more meaningful—a book that connects the dots between generations, between creators and their descendants, and between the stories we chase and the ones we end up telling.It’s not just a shift in subject—it’s a shift in purpose. The need to finish something once left undone becomes less about legacy and more about healing. Through this process, the unfinished project ceases to be a burden and starts to feel like a gift—one that gave her the space to write not only about others, but about herself, with honesty and compassion.And in that act of self-discovery, the book fulfills its quiet promise. It’s not the biography that was intended, but it’s the story that was needed. A reminder that the most powerful narratives aren’t always the ones that answer all the questions—but the ones that dare to ask them.
Summary
In chasing the story of a poet and unpacking the legacy of her father, the author uncovers something deeper—an emotional bridge between memory and identity. Also a Poet isn't just about art or biography; it’s about how we try to make sense of what we inherit and the stories we choose to tell in return. What starts as a literary investigation ends as a beautifully unresolved meditation on love, loss, and the messy grace of understanding.
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About the Author
Ada Calhoun is the New York Times–bestselling author of Crush: A Novel, hailed on the Today Show as the month's Best Romance and praised by the Washington Post for its "whirlwind of desire and possibility." Her memoir Also a Poet the New York Times called “a big valentine to New York City past and present, and a contribution to literary scholarship, molten with soul." Past books include Why We Can't Sleep, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give, and St. Marks Is Dead.
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