Agon

Abstract Agon (1957) is widely considered George Balanchine’s masterpiece. Chapter 3 explains why Agon became a favourite of Frank O’Hara’s and the various ways in which it encapsulates the concept of the agon. The agon names the public forum of contestation in ancient Greece, as well as the argumentation held within lyric poetry, specifically the ode form. This chapter pursues a genealogy of agonism, including its significance for Friedrich Nietzsche and later Renato Poggioli, author of the earliest monograph on the avant-garde, The Theory of the Avant-Garde (1962) and O’Hara’s teacher at Harvard. Agon helps gloss the social energies at work in the court of New York, including its art scene, and to comprehend O’Hara’s genealogical project of queer revaluation. The chapter concludes with a reading of O’Hara’s agonistic ‘Ode to Willem de Kooning’.