grove press

Meg and Jessica meet up with Beckett Rosset and hear about growing up fast and loose in the West Village.

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Meg and Jessica

In her latest book, Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me (Grove Atlantic, 2022), Ada Calhoun traces her fraught relationship with her father, New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl, and their shared obsession with the poet Frank O’Hara. The book features exclusive material from archival recordings of literary and art world legends, living and dead.

Having stumbled upon old cassette tapes of interviews her father had conducted for his never-completed biography of O’Hara, Calhoun set out to finish the book he had started 40 years earlier. 

As a lifelong O’Hara fan who grew up amid his bohemian cohort in the East Village, she thought the project would be easy, even fun, but the deeper she dove, the more difficult it became: Calhoun had to confront not just O’Hara’s past, but also her father’s and her own.

The result is a kaleidoscopic memoir that weaves compelling literary history with the moving, honest, and tender story of a complicated father-daughter bond. In reckoning with her unique heritage, as well as providing new insights into the life of one of our most important poets, Calhoun has offered a brave and hopeful meditation on parents and children, artistic ambition, and the complexities of what we leave behind. 

For the Reading, Ada Calhoun reads from Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me.

Music by Ryuichi Sakamoto

**Other audio:

Frank O’Hara reads Ode to Joy:

Frank O'Hara Reads His Poems

Join us as we discuss 'The Wages of Sin' by Kaite Welsh, 'Afterlife' by Julia Alvarez, 'Members Only' by Sameer Pandya, 'Convenience Store Woman' and 'Earthlings' by Sayaka Murata and 'The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle' and 'The Devil and the Dark Water' by Stuart Turton. Bonus: The value of first edition books hiding in your bookshelves!

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