Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me

"It's tempting to give Schjeldahl the last word on what he calls 'the best book I've ever read' in Calhoun's acknowledgments."

"She crafts a masterpiece entirely her own ..."

"The unexpected convergence of the challenging O'Hara book project and her father's sudden decline provide Calhoun with a singular perspective on the timeless issues of family relationships, most especially the vulnerabilities of following in a father's eminent footsteps and the elusive possibility of ever fully understanding our parents."

"isn't about the study of poetry so much as about living with it—and this energetic living with poetry was something that Frank O'Hara very industriously did."

"As for readers awaiting the definitive Frank O'Hara treatment, they'll find Also a Poet to be an engrossing placeholder."

"A fascinating memoir ..."

"kudos to them both, then, for this fierce, dissonant, yet compelling duet, or — by turns, however improbably — trio."

"But it turned into something much less dutiful, and more interesting, a story about both the impossibility of reconstructing another person's life and the importance of trying ..."

"Calhoun is an engaging guide and I was willing to wait and see where she led, but it was sometimes hard to follow ..."

"But it's also a familiar enough design: a literary biography (here, wrapped up in a second biography) mashed up with confessional vignettes from the author's own life, as successfully popularized over the past decade by writers such as Olivia Laing and Maggie Nelson ..."