"Neon In The Daylight": Postmodern Euphoria In Frank O’hara’s Poems

Contemporary American poet Frank O’Hara’s language is often casual,relaxed in diction,which has the characteristic of postmodern poetry.As a representative of the New York poetic school,O’Hara was deeply influenced by the development of New York culture after World War II.His poems are all-inclusive: the records of his daily life are also the epitomes of New York in the 1950 s.This thesis takes the desire in O’Hara’s poetry as the starting point and explores the euphoria in O’Hara’s poetry by using Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of schizophrenic analysis.The introduction briefly introduces O’Hara’s life,the theory of schizophrenic analysis and summarizes the research status at home and abroad.The first chapter demonstrates the poet’s writing technique,his fusion of art,and his intentional disregard of the Cold War.It analyzes how the poet’s desire breaks through the constraints of poetic tradition and political conformism.In the second chapter,through a close reading of O’Hara’s poetry,this thesis proposes that the poet,by the way of the schizophrenic,sets his desire to work in order to regain freedom in poetry in the model of “desiring machine,” which not only connects everything in reality but also links history and the present world.Based on the first two chapters,the third chapter uses the model of desiring machine to discuss the humorous tone of O’Hara’s poetry,his solid friendship,homosexual love,and constantly satisfied material desires.In this way,this thesis interprets O’Hara’s pleasures and desires embodied in the poetic texts.This thesis’ s conclusion is that O’Hara’s poetry is like a huge desiring machine,containing all kinds of things,whereas desires are constantly operating to produce euphoria.This kind of euphoria is a special product of postmodernism and one of the main characteristics of O’Hara’s poetry.