Mourning Coterie: Morton Feldman’s Posthumous Collaborations with Frank O’Hara

Abstract

On what grounds can we establish the collectivity of the New York School? Perhaps, as Frank O’Hara proposes, through a “science of legendary elegies.” By thinking community elegiacally, we might begin to discover how affective modes of sociability offer ways of interpreting the collaborations between the New York School poets and their musician and artist compatriots.¹ The friendship between composer Morton Feldman and Frank O’Hara—one of the most significant relationships within the New York School—exemplifies this mournful mode of sociability but has been little commented upon.

What then exactly constitutes the basis of our community?

—Robert Motherwell (qtd. in Goodnough 159)

And must I express the science of legendary elegies

—Frank O’Hara, “Second Avenue” (Collected Poems 141)