Having A Coke With You Poem by Frank O'Hara
Having A Coke With You
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
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
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it
My love for you. Thanks for sharing this poem with us.
Aha extraordinary and mind blowing with unique poetic special effects. Esp grinning at the Michael angelo line wow that was a witty brushstroke of wording.kudos. Do pls review my latest poem too.
what kind of coke? Cause dis is on da poems for middle skoolers. soooo yeah.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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4/25/2024 6:12:26 AM # 1.0.0.1119
Besides being a poet Frank O'Hara was a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. His lover was a dancer. This poem is a conversation, or is it a conversation that happens to be a poem? A meditation on art, which he loved, and a love poem that is addressed to, or spoken to, a person who is not a work of art, but created art when he performed. Thoroughly modern O'Hara weaves between the object-ness status of works of art and the performative, life-affirming status of people and the emotions that bind them together. But that person is also an object in this poem, a work of art, and subject to description by the author/artist. Even the title doubles as a first line, and includes a direct reference to a commercial brand name. A commodity, as art frequently is, but people never are, except if an artist becomes really famous and well-known for their particular style and content. The poem is pure genius.