Status Updates From Frank O'Hara: Selected Poems

“I am mainly preoccupied with the world as I experience it, and at times when I would rather be dead the thought that I could never write another poem has so far stopped me. I think this is an ignoble attitude. I would rather die for love, but I haven't.”
ohhhhhh my god

It was founded by me after lunch with LeRoi Jones on August 27, 1959, a day in which I was in love with someone (not Roi, by the way, a blond). I went back to work and wrote a poem for this person. While I was writing it I was realizing that if I wanted to I could use the telephone instead of writing the poem, and so Personism was born. It's a very exciting movement which will undoubtedly have lots of adherents.

oh my god I’ve finished all the poems……. now onto PERSONISM: A MANIFESTO

what a run in 1962! Now “Lana Turner has collapsed!”

“favorites: going to parties with you, being in corners at parties with you, being in gloomy pubs with you smiling, poking you at parties when you’re ’down,’ coming on like South Pacific with you at them, shrimping with you into the Russian dressing, leaving parties with you alone to go and eat a piece of cloud”

“when we meet we smile in another language” Bill Berkson I am sick

“Biotherm (for Bill Berkson)” you’ll always be famous to me “I’m so so so so so so so so so so happy so happy I make you happy”

hope Bill Berkson knows I think about him every day too

next up is “For the Chinese New Year & for Bill Berkson” and I’m so excited about it that I’m saving it for tomorrow

“that is odd I think of myself/as a cheerful type who pretends to/be hurt to get a little depth into/things that interest me”

tearing my hair out abt my thesis but Frank says “but it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night / wondering whether you are any good or not / and the only decision you can make is that you did it” AHHHH

I love how Frank interrupts himself in birthday poems to talk abt whatever he wants. John Button with “Now I have taken down the underwear/I washed last night from the various light fixtures/and can proceed.” Mike Goldberg with a list of dogs he owned as a boy and “YIPPEE! I’m glad I’m alive” it makes me want to weep

the part I’ve copied out from “Thinking of James Dean” is too long to paste here but know that I am floored

I AM THE LEAST DIFFICULT OF MEN. ALL I WANT IS BOUNDLESS LOVE.

“Fingers more breathless than a tongue laid upon the lips / in the hour of sunlight, early morning, before the mist rolls / in from the sea; and out there everything is turbulent and green.” oh I’m yelling out loud