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Selected Poems of Frank O'Hara
The first new selection of O’Hara’s work to come along in several decades. In this “marvellous compilation” (The New Yorker), editor Mark Ford reacquaints us with one of the most joyous and innovative poets of the postwar period.
265 pages, Paperback
First published February 12, 1974
124 people are currently reading
3328 people want to read
About the author
Frank O'Hara
125 books710 followersCollections of American poet Francis Russell O'Hara include
Meditations in an Emergency
(1957) and
Lunch Poems
(1964); playfulness, irony, sophistication, and a shared interest in the visual arts mark works of the New York School, an active group that included O'Hara during the 1950s and 1960s.
Parents reared O'Hara in Grafton, Massachusetts. O'Hara served in the south Pacific and Japan as a sonar man on the destroyer United States Ship Nicholas during World War II.
With the funding, made available to veterans, he attended Harvard University and roomed with artist-writer Edward Gorey. He majored in music and composed some works despite his irregular attendance was and his disparate interests. Visual art and contemporary music, his first love, heavily influenced O'Hara, a fine piano player all his life; he suddenly played swathes of Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff when visiting new partners, often to their shock.
At Harvard, O'Hara met John Ashbery and began publishing poems in the Harvard Advocate. Despite his love for music, O'Hara changed his major and graduated from Harvard in 1950 with a degree in English.
He then attended graduate school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. At Michigan, he won a Hopwood award and received his Master of Arts in English literature 1951. In that autumn, O'Hara moved into an apartment in city of New York with Joe LeSueur, his roommate and sometimes his lover for the next 11 years. Known throughout his life for his extreme sociability, passion, and warmth, O'Hara had hundreds of friends and lovers throughout his life, many from the New York art and poetry worlds. Soon after he arrived in New York, the Museum of Modern Art employed him at the front desk, and he began to write seriously.
O'Hara, active in the art world, working as a reviewer for Art News, and in 1960 was made Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture Exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art. He was also friends with artists like Willem de Kooning, Norman Bluhm, Larry Rivers, and Joan Mitchell. O'Hara died in an accident on Fire Island in which he was struck and seriously injured by a man speeding in a beach vehicle during the early morning hours of July 24, 1966. He died the next day of a ruptured liver at the age of 40 and was buried in the Green River Cemetery on Long Island.
Parents reared O'Hara in Grafton, Massachusetts. O'Hara served in the south Pacific and Japan as a sonar man on the destroyer United States Ship Nicholas during World War II.
With the funding, made available to veterans, he attended Harvard University and roomed with artist-writer Edward Gorey. He majored in music and composed some works despite his irregular attendance was and his disparate interests. Visual art and contemporary music, his first love, heavily influenced O'Hara, a fine piano player all his life; he suddenly played swathes of Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff when visiting new partners, often to their shock.
At Harvard, O'Hara met John Ashbery and began publishing poems in the Harvard Advocate. Despite his love for music, O'Hara changed his major and graduated from Harvard in 1950 with a degree in English.
He then attended graduate school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. At Michigan, he won a Hopwood award and received his Master of Arts in English literature 1951. In that autumn, O'Hara moved into an apartment in city of New York with Joe LeSueur, his roommate and sometimes his lover for the next 11 years. Known throughout his life for his extreme sociability, passion, and warmth, O'Hara had hundreds of friends and lovers throughout his life, many from the New York art and poetry worlds. Soon after he arrived in New York, the Museum of Modern Art employed him at the front desk, and he began to write seriously.
O'Hara, active in the art world, working as a reviewer for Art News, and in 1960 was made Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture Exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art. He was also friends with artists like Willem de Kooning, Norman Bluhm, Larry Rivers, and Joan Mitchell. O'Hara died in an accident on Fire Island in which he was struck and seriously injured by a man speeding in a beach vehicle during the early morning hours of July 24, 1966. He died the next day of a ruptured liver at the age of 40 and was buried in the Green River Cemetery on Long Island.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 143 reviews
December 29, 2014
Frank O'Hara's poems are made for weather like this: bright high summer with air so warm and thick it feels like you could swim in it, when it's easy to forget you or the world has ever been cold. Summery, happy and joyful aren't ideas commonly associated with poetry for grownups but here they're intrinsic… Reading this seemed all wrong whenever I tried to finish off the book (for the first time) between last September and this April. O'Hara's is not an idiotic sort of happiness like motivational posters: he knew sadness and loss and wrote of them, his positivity was clearly informed by them, but he was one of those people who simply, essentially, loves life and the things and people around them. Wikipedia quote: Known throughout his life for his extreme sociability, passion, and warmth, O'Hara had hundreds of friends and lovers throughout his life, many from the New York art and poetry worlds. (The anti-Plath? It's too long since I've read her so that might be flippant and a tad unfair.) The sheer joy in the stuff of life, and the slight naivety that's perhaps necessary to a rosy view of the world reminded me of the memoirs of [former Blur bassist] Alex James, the second volume of which I'd also just finished.
If it weren't for this lovely article in The Millions last year I may never have read him. I'm not exactly big on American literature but those quotes made me an instant convert. I love their analysis of the nature of camp in his poems. It's just perfectly done, it's never Lily Savage crassness. Their combination of beauty and silliness was something I was terribly short of when I found that article, I couldn't stop re-reading and smiling.
Oh! Kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
Harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! All
The stuff they’ve always talked about
Still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
Even on beachheads and biers. They
Do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks
------
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles.
That “as unpleasantly definitive as statuary” had me in fits of giggles. There are many lines where the humour bounces up from nowhere and says “boo!”. It's laughter that starts before I know why - and perhaps knowing why doesn't matter - the best and most enlivening sort.
I don't always get what's going on in the longer, Beat-style pieces – perhaps they could do with notes, but it seems such a shame to dissect these poems! Nevertheless they flood with imagery of his culture, New York in the 50s, camp movie icons, his friends, and countless beautiful, surreal, atmospheric things. Very hypnagogic, and like most poetry I prefer to feel it not analyse it, letting it wash over me. (Being gay in the 1950s has never sounded like a remotely fun experience, but O'Hara's poems manage to make it sound as if it was – he had good friends in an accepting subculture, and that sunny temperament.)
How sad that he is no longer with us, as a twinkly-eyed wise old man in his eighties; surely by lasting longer he'd have become better known as he deserved, someone who we'd be mourning in a few years time, rather than the best part of fifty years ago due to a stupid hit-and-run. But still, what wonderful poems he wrote down in a career of less than fifteen years.
I can't find exactly the right words to say what I want to about these poems. And I can't find any really amazing reviews on here which capture it (like this one which later said what I'd wanted to say about Villon - of whom O'Hara was also a fan).
[A couple of comments and likes refer to an earlier, different review posted when I started reading this in August 2013.]
If it weren't for this lovely article in The Millions last year I may never have read him. I'm not exactly big on American literature but those quotes made me an instant convert. I love their analysis of the nature of camp in his poems. It's just perfectly done, it's never Lily Savage crassness. Their combination of beauty and silliness was something I was terribly short of when I found that article, I couldn't stop re-reading and smiling.
Oh! Kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
Harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! All
The stuff they’ve always talked about
Still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
Even on beachheads and biers. They
Do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks
------
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles.
That “as unpleasantly definitive as statuary” had me in fits of giggles. There are many lines where the humour bounces up from nowhere and says “boo!”. It's laughter that starts before I know why - and perhaps knowing why doesn't matter - the best and most enlivening sort.
I don't always get what's going on in the longer, Beat-style pieces – perhaps they could do with notes, but it seems such a shame to dissect these poems! Nevertheless they flood with imagery of his culture, New York in the 50s, camp movie icons, his friends, and countless beautiful, surreal, atmospheric things. Very hypnagogic, and like most poetry I prefer to feel it not analyse it, letting it wash over me. (Being gay in the 1950s has never sounded like a remotely fun experience, but O'Hara's poems manage to make it sound as if it was – he had good friends in an accepting subculture, and that sunny temperament.)
How sad that he is no longer with us, as a twinkly-eyed wise old man in his eighties; surely by lasting longer he'd have become better known as he deserved, someone who we'd be mourning in a few years time, rather than the best part of fifty years ago due to a stupid hit-and-run. But still, what wonderful poems he wrote down in a career of less than fifteen years.
I can't find exactly the right words to say what I want to about these poems. And I can't find any really amazing reviews on here which capture it (like this one which later said what I'd wanted to say about Villon - of whom O'Hara was also a fan).
[A couple of comments and likes refer to an earlier, different review posted when I started reading this in August 2013.]
August 6, 2016
There's a line in the introduction to this edition quoting Frank O'Hara that goes, "I know you won't think this is much of a subject for a poem but I just can't help it: I feel like this." This is Frank O'Hara's poetry
June 23, 2007
I always go back to this book. It stays on my shelf. O'Hara's poetry is quirky, smart, funny.... Check out the opening to "In Memory of my Feelings":
"My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent/
and he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets./ He has several likenesses, like stars and years, like numerals."
"My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent/
and he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets./ He has several likenesses, like stars and years, like numerals."
Read
October 7, 2023Huge influence!
"St. Paul and All That" starts "Totally abashed and smiling" and ends "you never come when you say you'll come but on the other hand you come."
"Steps" ends "oh god it's so wonderful / to get out of bed / and drink too much coffee / and smoke too many cigarettes / and love you so much."
The sun described as a "hot optimistic cliché."
"St. Paul and All That" starts "Totally abashed and smiling" and ends "you never come when you say you'll come but on the other hand you come."
"Steps" ends "oh god it's so wonderful / to get out of bed / and drink too much coffee / and smoke too many cigarettes / and love you so much."
The sun described as a "hot optimistic cliché."
November 30, 2021
I have this revolting fantasy where I gift someone a copy of this collection, or some Frank O'Hara collection (likely his completed work), and I write on that blank first page that I always think of them when I read, specifically, "For Grace, After a Party," "Having a Coke with You," and "Morning."
but there exists no such person as of right now.
in that fantasy, we laugh at, "And someone you love enters the room and says wouldn't you like the eggs a little different today? And when they arrive they are just plain scrambled eggs and the warm weather is holding." 'cause how can you write a line so vivid and real... about scrambled eggs? and in that same fantasy, I am blazing a tirade while thinking of them, and I think we're in Paris, and they're on the balcony behind long, flowing white curtains towel-drying their hair while I read about how Frank O'Hara wishes he were in Paris, not New York, and I read "Having a Coke with You," having already been to those places, and maybe I'll read "Morning," as well.
but, for now, I am reading the "Selected Poems", not the complete collection. I think I have to save that for when I do meet such a person. I think this person reads, as well- hopefully they'll appreciate the collection I'll gift them. Of course, they read poetry, because we'll talk about how O'Hara is one of the few gorgeously whimsical poets with comedic integrity that can format his work properly, too. And they'll understand. I'd like to believe they have some poet I don't know in mind for someone like me. This is all very personal and private. This stays between us but- I have only ever loved someone who reads poetry once- and I do think of that person every time I read that one select poet's work. Every time I seek out that poet or that [redacted] bot shows up on my Twitter timeline, I do always think of them, as though, despite it being written long before us, it was written belonging to our names.
for now, I'm reading the "Selected Poems" and putting the complete collection on hold for a different, future time. maybe you'll read this and see I have marked it "Read", finally, and rated it, and I'll have some beautiful story to tell you in the review.
for now, there aren't enough stars for how O'Hara's work makes me feel- longing for some distant feeling; feeling like I'm reeling around New York; wishing I was reeling around Paris; wishing, maybe, I wasn't reeling at all.
but there exists no such person as of right now.
in that fantasy, we laugh at, "And someone you love enters the room and says wouldn't you like the eggs a little different today? And when they arrive they are just plain scrambled eggs and the warm weather is holding." 'cause how can you write a line so vivid and real... about scrambled eggs? and in that same fantasy, I am blazing a tirade while thinking of them, and I think we're in Paris, and they're on the balcony behind long, flowing white curtains towel-drying their hair while I read about how Frank O'Hara wishes he were in Paris, not New York, and I read "Having a Coke with You," having already been to those places, and maybe I'll read "Morning," as well.
but, for now, I am reading the "Selected Poems", not the complete collection. I think I have to save that for when I do meet such a person. I think this person reads, as well- hopefully they'll appreciate the collection I'll gift them. Of course, they read poetry, because we'll talk about how O'Hara is one of the few gorgeously whimsical poets with comedic integrity that can format his work properly, too. And they'll understand. I'd like to believe they have some poet I don't know in mind for someone like me. This is all very personal and private. This stays between us but- I have only ever loved someone who reads poetry once- and I do think of that person every time I read that one select poet's work. Every time I seek out that poet or that [redacted] bot shows up on my Twitter timeline, I do always think of them, as though, despite it being written long before us, it was written belonging to our names.
for now, I'm reading the "Selected Poems" and putting the complete collection on hold for a different, future time. maybe you'll read this and see I have marked it "Read", finally, and rated it, and I'll have some beautiful story to tell you in the review.
for now, there aren't enough stars for how O'Hara's work makes me feel- longing for some distant feeling; feeling like I'm reeling around New York; wishing I was reeling around Paris; wishing, maybe, I wasn't reeling at all.
January 10, 2013
Frank O'Hara just had that knack of writing a great poem. I think he had a great ear for language, and knew how to edit things around his life. Poems that read like conversations and puts you right into the New York art world of the late 50's. One of my favorite American poets, that's for sure.
June 29, 2020
"you see i have always wanted things to be beautiful
and now, for a change, they are!"
and now, for a change, they are!"
May 11, 2016
"Animals" is an all-time favorite:
Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth
it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners
the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water
I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days
December 31, 2022
frank-ly i ly frank <33
Read
June 11, 2023stonked it thru I feel like the drums in sing sing sing
poet of the exclamation! man all joy!
luv
poet of the exclamation! man all joy!
luv
December 15, 2025
and in a sense we’re all winning
we’re alive
we’re alive
January 14, 2014
This was my first encounter with Frank O'Hara's poetry despite being a fan of his New York contemporaries Kenneth Koch and James Schuyler. There has been a lot of recent interest in O'Hara's collection Reflections In An Emergency since it was featured brilliantly in an episode of Mad Men. No matter what its merit, any time the egenral public takes an interest in serious poetry, I count that as a good thing.
That said, O'Hara's work feels a bit inconsistent. The best of these poems demonstrate O'Hara's fierce kineticism and linguistic play as in "Having A Coke With You," "Why I'm Not A Painter," and "To My Dead Father." I found, upon doing a bit of research, that I liked the poems in this Seelected which originally appeared in Lunch Poems much more than those plucked from Meditations In An Emergency. If I had to venture a guess as to why, I'd say that Lunch Poems offered O'Hara a much freer space in which to play. O'Hara called these his "I do this. I do that" poems. Therein lies O'Hara's charm and inventiveness. Little phrases like, "There are several Puerto/Ricans on the avenue today, which/makes it beautiful and warm" from "A Step Away From Them" abound in the Lunch Poems and always provide surprise.
One word of criticism: though it was considered quite a revolutionary tendency at the time, I find O'Hara's constant references to specific people and places unknown to me a bit tiresome. I realize that so much of O'Hara's energy came from Manhattan and from his friends, but at times, the poems read like a conversation between popular kids in a high school hallway. They're discussing a party you weren't invited to in codes you can't break and weren't meant to. In the beginning, you're curious; but after a while, you realize that his life is no more interesting than yours; he's just learned to pay close attention to it.
That said, O'Hara's work feels a bit inconsistent. The best of these poems demonstrate O'Hara's fierce kineticism and linguistic play as in "Having A Coke With You," "Why I'm Not A Painter," and "To My Dead Father." I found, upon doing a bit of research, that I liked the poems in this Seelected which originally appeared in Lunch Poems much more than those plucked from Meditations In An Emergency. If I had to venture a guess as to why, I'd say that Lunch Poems offered O'Hara a much freer space in which to play. O'Hara called these his "I do this. I do that" poems. Therein lies O'Hara's charm and inventiveness. Little phrases like, "There are several Puerto/Ricans on the avenue today, which/makes it beautiful and warm" from "A Step Away From Them" abound in the Lunch Poems and always provide surprise.
One word of criticism: though it was considered quite a revolutionary tendency at the time, I find O'Hara's constant references to specific people and places unknown to me a bit tiresome. I realize that so much of O'Hara's energy came from Manhattan and from his friends, but at times, the poems read like a conversation between popular kids in a high school hallway. They're discussing a party you weren't invited to in codes you can't break and weren't meant to. In the beginning, you're curious; but after a while, you realize that his life is no more interesting than yours; he's just learned to pay close attention to it.
January 11, 2011
The hell with all those other selections of O'Hara.
This is the book.
The "Collected" and the "Retrieved" are scrapyards, treasures and forgettable-- though celebratory! though full of life!-- poems squished side by side. Speaking of squished, this is the first O'Hara "Selected" I've come across to give every poem its own page. Right on!
And it's got "Sleeping on the Wing," "You Are Gorgeous and I'm Coming," "Hotel Transylvanie," his little poem about Keats, "To the Film Industry in Crisis," and "In Favor of One's Time."
Give this book to everybody, climb a tree and give it to the leaves, flush it down the toilet to give it to Poseidon, this is a treasure.
This is the book.
The "Collected" and the "Retrieved" are scrapyards, treasures and forgettable-- though celebratory! though full of life!-- poems squished side by side. Speaking of squished, this is the first O'Hara "Selected" I've come across to give every poem its own page. Right on!
And it's got "Sleeping on the Wing," "You Are Gorgeous and I'm Coming," "Hotel Transylvanie," his little poem about Keats, "To the Film Industry in Crisis," and "In Favor of One's Time."
Give this book to everybody, climb a tree and give it to the leaves, flush it down the toilet to give it to Poseidon, this is a treasure.
January 8, 2013
The only poem I have ever committed to memory was written by Frank O'Hara, which sadly is not featured in this collection. However I will share it with you so you can get a feel for his poetry and soul.
"You do not always seem to be able to decide
that it is all right, that you are doing what you're doing
and yet there is always that complicity in your smile
that it is we, not you, who are doing it
which is one of the things that make me love you"
"You do not always seem to be able to decide
that it is all right, that you are doing what you're doing
and yet there is always that complicity in your smile
that it is we, not you, who are doing it
which is one of the things that make me love you"
July 31, 2019
I honest to God have no idea how to rate O’Hara, hahaha. I’m hesitantly settling on a 4, though it feels more like a 3.5 (except even that seems low at times). I should add that “In Favor of One’s Time” left such an impression on me, should you want to check out one of his poems.
I couldn’t tell you why I decided to pick up a collection of poems by Frank O’Hara, whose works I know almost nothing about, but I’m glad that I got around to read his stuff… I think—
I know that “I think” seems questionable, but it’s because I finished this edited collection with a “hrm, well that was interesting” impression. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed his writing at times. I admit that it took a bit of getting used to his style, but you get into the swing of things after the initial “I have no idea what’s going on.”
After a dozen or so poems, I started to get an idea of O’Hara’s approach to his poetry. I could be wrong, but each poem read like a diary entry, or pages from a notebook filled with idle thoughts. I can see how this could frustrate some people, but I enjoyed that personal, abstract touch that made it so distinct.
The poems are strange, poorly titled (a hefty number of them were titled “Poem”), but has this whimsy and intimacy that made for an intriguing read. One moment you’re reading beautiful lines that are profound in nature, and next thing you know, O’Hara will sprinkle in some vulgar language. You go from themes of nature and softness while talking about a lover, to some happening or person that almost reads as an account of what happened in O’Hara’s day.
I couldn’t tell you why I decided to pick up a collection of poems by Frank O’Hara, whose works I know almost nothing about, but I’m glad that I got around to read his stuff… I think—
I know that “I think” seems questionable, but it’s because I finished this edited collection with a “hrm, well that was interesting” impression. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed his writing at times. I admit that it took a bit of getting used to his style, but you get into the swing of things after the initial “I have no idea what’s going on.”
After a dozen or so poems, I started to get an idea of O’Hara’s approach to his poetry. I could be wrong, but each poem read like a diary entry, or pages from a notebook filled with idle thoughts. I can see how this could frustrate some people, but I enjoyed that personal, abstract touch that made it so distinct.
The poems are strange, poorly titled (a hefty number of them were titled “Poem”), but has this whimsy and intimacy that made for an intriguing read. One moment you’re reading beautiful lines that are profound in nature, and next thing you know, O’Hara will sprinkle in some vulgar language. You go from themes of nature and softness while talking about a lover, to some happening or person that almost reads as an account of what happened in O’Hara’s day.
February 14, 2025
I’ve read this collection countless times. Every time the lines open up in new ways and honestly in life-changing ways. Frank O’Hara is by far my favorite poet.
I can’t believe there’s not
another world where we will sit
and read new poems to each other
high on a mountain in the wind.
You can be Tu Fu, I’ll be Po Chu-i
and the Monkey Lady’ll be in the moon,
smiling at our ill-fitting heads
as we watch snow settle on a twig.
Or shall we be really gone? this
is not the grass I saw in my youth!
and if the moon, when it rises
tonight, is empty —a bad sign,
meaning ‘You go, like the blossoms.’
I can’t believe there’s not
another world where we will sit
and read new poems to each other
high on a mountain in the wind.
You can be Tu Fu, I’ll be Po Chu-i
and the Monkey Lady’ll be in the moon,
smiling at our ill-fitting heads
as we watch snow settle on a twig.
Or shall we be really gone? this
is not the grass I saw in my youth!
and if the moon, when it rises
tonight, is empty —a bad sign,
meaning ‘You go, like the blossoms.’
June 13, 2022
don’t give a shite i loved it
February 16, 2026
not a fan of whatever was going on here
December 4, 2018
Movies, 50's-60s abstract art, New York, cool rifts on life, sun grass, the city, stream-of-consciousness, poetry, poets, artists, actors, theater, cycle and recycle of images and ideas, color, black and white, museums, Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, male, cerebral, funny, sad, introspective, extroverted, gregarious, gay-perspective.
To put it simply, this book of poetry deserves to be read again, and yet is no easy read. If the words above are meaningful to you--or at least don't put you off--and you enjoy poetry, then worth your time. Read a poem at a time, or many. Set it down, and come back to it. Did I get it all, no. Nor did I like it all, either. And Frank O'Hara would probably say that's okay.
To put it simply, this book of poetry deserves to be read again, and yet is no easy read. If the words above are meaningful to you--or at least don't put you off--and you enjoy poetry, then worth your time. Read a poem at a time, or many. Set it down, and come back to it. Did I get it all, no. Nor did I like it all, either. And Frank O'Hara would probably say that's okay.
February 28, 2015
One of my all time fave poetry collections.
November 6, 2023
"but I do not mean that tenderness doesn't / linger like a Paris afternoon" (For CNY, 183).
O'Hara is king of the ecstatic and absurd. Snippets of his poems ("I love you. I love you, / but I'm turning to my verses / and my heart is closing / like a fist") ricochet back to me all the time.
Adorer of autumn, curator, friend of painters, observer of the French, O'Hara excels most in brevity and is the ultimate romantic. I mean, "Her slender hands accomplish more / in moving from sheet to telephone / than all the burning shields knights bore, / dull blows or slashings to the bone" (To Jane, 76). One cannot forget cornerstones such as "For Grace, After A Party" or "Having a Coke with You."
"All this I desire. To / deepen you by my quickness / and delight as if you / were logical and proven, / but still be quiet as if / I were used to you; as if / you would never leave me / and were the inexorable / product of my own time" (Poetry, 19).
O'Hara makes me think of Hannah reading aloud in our kitchen. Across time, thank you.
O'Hara is king of the ecstatic and absurd. Snippets of his poems ("I love you. I love you, / but I'm turning to my verses / and my heart is closing / like a fist") ricochet back to me all the time.
Adorer of autumn, curator, friend of painters, observer of the French, O'Hara excels most in brevity and is the ultimate romantic. I mean, "Her slender hands accomplish more / in moving from sheet to telephone / than all the burning shields knights bore, / dull blows or slashings to the bone" (To Jane, 76). One cannot forget cornerstones such as "For Grace, After A Party" or "Having a Coke with You."
"All this I desire. To / deepen you by my quickness / and delight as if you / were logical and proven, / but still be quiet as if / I were used to you; as if / you would never leave me / and were the inexorable / product of my own time" (Poetry, 19).
O'Hara makes me think of Hannah reading aloud in our kitchen. Across time, thank you.
May 23, 2020
I started reading this collection when quarantine began. Since I was unable to go outside and leave my apartment, I took comfort in O'Hara's poems and his descriptions of the city, the MoMa, love, and more by taking my time with just a few poems per day. A balm for a difficult time that I will never forget, and I'm glad I'm slowly reading more and more poetry.
April 3, 2021
despite the 4 star rating i found this very uneven which I guess makes sense bc it's a selection of poems spanning his entire publishing career. I love love loved a few of them, despised a few others, found a decent proportion more completely indecipherable. I will probably read lunch poems and love poems in full now and I will probably NOT read anything else
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May 26, 2025“One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.”
January 8, 2021
Quite nice
March 2, 2021
I normally don't vibe especially with poetry. BUT. OHARA. just wow.
(Except for the poems that are just name dropping NYC people. But the rest of them? Stunning)
(Except for the poems that are just name dropping NYC people. But the rest of them? Stunning)
March 4, 2021
yes!!!!!!! yes!!!!!!!!!! fuck!!!!!! some real good ones in here
August 8, 2021
absolutely incredible (but honestly i wasn't expecting anything less)
January 2, 2023
fucking poetry
January 16, 2023
“Yet I hold myself to you. I have the jangling nerves
of legendary people who box each other’s ears and if
it is a union of saxophones and harps and heroes
in me you may discover the gossamer draperies
of defection and death, and a love for the ancient kings.”
Personal favourites include:
Why I am not a painter
A Rant
Avenue A
Biotherm (For Bill Berkson)
Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul
of legendary people who box each other’s ears and if
it is a union of saxophones and harps and heroes
in me you may discover the gossamer draperies
of defection and death, and a love for the ancient kings.”
Personal favourites include:
Why I am not a painter
A Rant
Avenue A
Biotherm (For Bill Berkson)
Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul
Displaying 1 - 30 of 143 reviews