William Heyen
Straight's Suite for Craig Cotter & Frank O'Hara

The 52 lyrics that make up William Heyen's newest collection of poetry are at once a nod to the progenitor of American poetry of sexuality and the body, Walt Whitman, and a communication addressed to the late Frank O'Hara, famed member of the New York School of poets in the 1950s and 1960s. In his 1959 Personism: a Manifesto, O'Hara describes a poetry that "address[es] itself to one person (other than the poet himself), thus evoking overtones of love without destroying love's life-giving vulgarity." In this Suite, we often find Heyen addressing his lines to O'Hara, drawing on memory and hearsay to probe the intersection between O'Hara's sexuality and his aesthetic. Heyen asks O'Hara how "I might get my poem to be its subject,/ not just be about it," which in some ways is the project of all art.