Review of Also a Poet by Ada Calhoun

*Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me* by Ada Calhoun (2022). Published by Grove Press.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

This blog post is interesting to me because lately, I’ve been struggling to get in my reading time. I was working for the longest time as a freelancer and contractor, but recently pivoted to an 8-5 job where I’m in an office. It’s not hybrid, so I’m always at home trying to put the puzzle pieces together of how I’ll get my reading done. I also continue working on this blog when I’m not at work, so the Instagram reels I’m fed about a 5-9 feel too real right now.

Anyways, I am trying to find that time to read here and there. Somehow I’m still on track for my Goodreads goal, even though I’ve been slowly giving up on the notion of reading goals in life. I think they can be a little too much pressure and takes the fun off of reading at the end of the day, and I want to read because I want to stay in touch with literature while also pursuing my side career as a writer.

I knew about Also a Poet when it fist came out, and I wanted to read it from the very beginning. However, life happened, as I wrote before, and I only got to it relatively recently. I also read the entire book while taking my car in to the dealer for service.

Let’s get into the review! I really don’t want to ramble too much here.

Ada Calhoun recalls her father’s quest to publish the first biography on Frank O’Hara, as well as the art and literary elite she was surrounded by.

This is a work of nonfiction and memoir by Ada Calhoun, whose father is Peter Schjeldahl. He passed recently, in 2022, but he was a prominent critic in the New York art scene and was best known for being the chief art critic over at The New Yorker.

That meant Calhoun was surrounded by a lot of art and literary elite from a very young age, leading to some interesting recollections about her time exposed to the art world. However, some of those recollections are not very positive, especially when older men were predatory to her as a young child.

That said, the main focus of this memoir is her father’s quest to try and complete a biography of Frank O’Hara. He had done an immense amount of research and primary interviews with people who knew the beloved poet, but his work was blocked by O’Hara’s surviving family member.

Calhoun finds the cassette tapes that her father had done all of those years ago, leading to the events recalled in the book. She wants to finish the book he was determined to complete 40 years prior, but along the way she finds out more about O’Hara, who she had deeply admired.

Working with this material also forces Calhoun to reflect on her own childhood, as she engaged with many figures who had known O’Hara intimately as a child, and her relationship with her father.

One of the big barriers throughout the book, and someone who is almost set up to be an antagonist, is the head of O’Hara’s estate. I think if you’re looking for those bits of O’Hara in this book, you’re probably not going to be satisfied—the real meat of the book is the journey sparked by the beloved poet.

Overall Thoughts

I wanted to love this book, especially considering how excited I was going into it. However, by the end, I found it more difficult to get through those last fifty pages. I loved learning about Calhoun’s world and childhood, especially considering that period of artistry and literary work in New York is so fascinating to me.

I couldn’t imagine being surrounded by so many people who were considered “important” in the grand scheme of things, then learning about their significance later on in life. That’s wild. Frank O’Hara does take the backseat to her musings on her relationship with her father, which is the real story behind everything going on in this book.

In the end I guess I just had different expectations going into this. The writing is fine and accessible—I had no qualms with that. I just wanted to love this book more than I did, but I could definitely see how other people love it.

I say if it interests you, then get a copy at your local library or indie bookstore. Give it a chance! You may love it a lot more than I did, and that’s okay.

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