What do you think?
Rate this book
Lunch Poems
Important poems by the late New York poet published in The New American Poetry, Evergreen Review, Floating Bear and stranger places.
Often O'Hara, strolling through the noisy splintered glare of a Manhattan noon, has paused at a sample Olivetti to type up thirty or forty lines of ruminations, or pondering more deeply has withdrawn to a darkened ware- or firehouse to limn his computed misunderstandings of the eternal questions of life, coexistence, and depth, while never forgetting to eat lunch, his favorite meal.
Often O'Hara, strolling through the noisy splintered glare of a Manhattan noon, has paused at a sample Olivetti to type up thirty or forty lines of ruminations, or pondering more deeply has withdrawn to a darkened ware- or firehouse to limn his computed misunderstandings of the eternal questions of life, coexistence, and depth, while never forgetting to eat lunch, his favorite meal.
82 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
About the author
Frank O'Hara
123 books667 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 856 reviews
April 1, 2020
I love Frank O’Hara because he wrote poetry the way Fred Astaire danced. Frank and Fred make it all look as easy as breathing. You can see Robert Lowell and Gene Kelly sweat. But not O’Hara, not Astaire.
Just because you can’t see them sweat doesn’t mean that it was easy. It takes serious concentration to look this relaxed, to never waste a gesture and yet look like you’re messing around. It takes a lifetime of movement, a habit of centering yourself, a talent for cultivating conditions that makes the lightning want to strike you. And it takes much playfulness and modesty too, and enough humility to be your own director, the kind who knows instinctively when to say “cut!”
This small eighty-two page book of thirty-seven poems is called Lunch Poems because Frank liked to write poems at lunch but also because it is the perfect book to read during your lunch too.
Originally I thought about taking up space here by reproducing the book's acknowledged masterpieces, “The Day Lady Died,” “Ave Maria,” and “Poem”(“Lana Turner has collapsed!”)--each one of which is my favorite poem. Instead, I’ll share a poem about New York City, a city Frank O’Hara loved intensely, in all its astonishing complexity.
SONG
Is it dirty
does it look dirty
that’s what you think of in the city
does it just seem dirty
that’s what you think of in the city
you don’t refuse to breath do you
someone comes along with a very bad character
he seems attractive. is he really. yes, very
he’s attractive as his character is bad. Is it. yes
that’s what you think of in the city
run your finger along your no-moss mind
that’s not a thought that’s soot
and you take a lot of dirt off someone
is the character less bad. no. it improves constantly
you don’t refuse to breathe do you
July 28, 2019
As far as dead writers go, Frank O'Hara might be a contender for “worst death on record.”
When Mr. O'Hara was 40 years old, just starting to be on the literary scene, he and a group of friends were on Fire Island, in New York, and their vehicle broke down. As they were standing on the side of the road, figuring out what to do, a young twenty-something drove by and hit O'Hara with his car.
Can't you just see this happening to you?
He had finally pulled his shit together, was just starting to make a little money, just starting to receive some acclaim for his writing, and then BAM! He was dead.
This life. I tell you. . .
Mr. O'Hara was many things, including an accomplished pianist and a lover of Boris Pasternak (really, who isn't?).
He also appeared to have a great sexual appetite, and it's too bad he was a chain-smoker, gay, and dead before I was born. . .
because he wrote lines like:
you are of me, that's what
and that's the meaning of fertility
hard and moist and moaning
Whoa.
And:
oh god it's wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much
Oh, yeah, baby.
And, like the great Carl Sandburg, who made love to the city of Chicago in verse (if you don't know Sandburg's “Chicago,” please, for the love of all that is holy, Google it), Mr. O'Hara made love to the city of New York in his “A Step Away From Them,” probably the best poem in this collection:
It’s my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grates. The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.
On
to Times Square, where the sign
blows smoke over my head, and higher
the waterfall pours lightly. A
Negro stands in a doorway with a
toothpick, languorously agitating.
A blonde chorus girl clicks: he
smiles and rubs his chin. Everything
suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of
a Thursday.
Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write, as are light bulbs in daylight.
I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET’S
CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of
Federico Fellini, è bell’ attrice.
And chocolate malted. A lady in
foxes on such a day puts her poodle
in a cab.
There are several Puerto
Ricans on the avenue today, which
makes it beautiful and warm. First
Bunny died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollock. But is the
earth as full as life was full, of them?
And one has eaten and one walks,
past the magazines with nudes
and the posters for BULLFIGHT and
the Manhattan Storage Warehouse,
which they’ll soon tear down. I
used to think they had the Armory
Show there.
A glass of papaya juice
and back to work. My heart is in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.
Who knows what else he might have written, given the chance?
This is a fun, short collection and my affection for it grew after I went back and read all of the poems over again.
There's a learning curve here, and Mr. O'Hara was a very clever man.
When Mr. O'Hara was 40 years old, just starting to be on the literary scene, he and a group of friends were on Fire Island, in New York, and their vehicle broke down. As they were standing on the side of the road, figuring out what to do, a young twenty-something drove by and hit O'Hara with his car.
Can't you just see this happening to you?
He had finally pulled his shit together, was just starting to make a little money, just starting to receive some acclaim for his writing, and then BAM! He was dead.
This life. I tell you. . .
Mr. O'Hara was many things, including an accomplished pianist and a lover of Boris Pasternak (really, who isn't?).
He also appeared to have a great sexual appetite, and it's too bad he was a chain-smoker, gay, and dead before I was born. . .
because he wrote lines like:
you are of me, that's what
and that's the meaning of fertility
hard and moist and moaning
Whoa.
And:
oh god it's wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much
Oh, yeah, baby.
And, like the great Carl Sandburg, who made love to the city of Chicago in verse (if you don't know Sandburg's “Chicago,” please, for the love of all that is holy, Google it), Mr. O'Hara made love to the city of New York in his “A Step Away From Them,” probably the best poem in this collection:
It’s my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grates. The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.
On
to Times Square, where the sign
blows smoke over my head, and higher
the waterfall pours lightly. A
Negro stands in a doorway with a
toothpick, languorously agitating.
A blonde chorus girl clicks: he
smiles and rubs his chin. Everything
suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of
a Thursday.
Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write, as are light bulbs in daylight.
I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET’S
CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of
Federico Fellini, è bell’ attrice.
And chocolate malted. A lady in
foxes on such a day puts her poodle
in a cab.
There are several Puerto
Ricans on the avenue today, which
makes it beautiful and warm. First
Bunny died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollock. But is the
earth as full as life was full, of them?
And one has eaten and one walks,
past the magazines with nudes
and the posters for BULLFIGHT and
the Manhattan Storage Warehouse,
which they’ll soon tear down. I
used to think they had the Armory
Show there.
A glass of papaya juice
and back to work. My heart is in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.
Who knows what else he might have written, given the chance?
This is a fun, short collection and my affection for it grew after I went back and read all of the poems over again.
There's a learning curve here, and Mr. O'Hara was a very clever man.
September 17, 2023
3.5 Stars
In November, my friend Jennifer and I viewed the Alex Katz exhibit at the Guggenheim. There was a portrait and several mentions of the poet Frank O'Hara. I had never heard of him and was intrigued so I Googled him on the way home. Eventually, I went to the library to pick up the only book of his poetry in their collection.
This book has been sitting in my kitchen for several weeks as I read a poem each morning. Every poetry loving friend who has been in my house during this time period has picked up this book and exclaimed something to the effect of, "I love his poetry!" and then proceeded to read to me their favorite poem in the collection.
How did I not know this poet and his work?
Publication 1964
In November, my friend Jennifer and I viewed the Alex Katz exhibit at the Guggenheim. There was a portrait and several mentions of the poet Frank O'Hara. I had never heard of him and was intrigued so I Googled him on the way home. Eventually, I went to the library to pick up the only book of his poetry in their collection.
This book has been sitting in my kitchen for several weeks as I read a poem each morning. Every poetry loving friend who has been in my house during this time period has picked up this book and exclaimed something to the effect of, "I love his poetry!" and then proceeded to read to me their favorite poem in the collection.
How did I not know this poet and his work?
Publication 1964
September 12, 2024
Hi
my name is Frank and I have many friends
most of them are famous
I like talking about them
by using their first names only
you’re supposed to know who they are
and if you don’t
you shouldn’t be reading my
poems
there’s Norman for instance
you know Norman
he’s famous
curates an art gallery on the upper east side
I get invited to all his dinner parties
which is lucky for me cuz otherwise
I wouldn’t eat
there’s literally one yoghurt left
in my frigidaire
and the expiry date
should be in a museum
Boy am I bohemian
anyway
Norman was telling me about Selma
who’s a famous Cubist dancer
(she practically invented square dancing)
Selma was involved in a shoplifting scandal on 53rd
& 3rd and if you don’t know exactly what store
I’m talking about
You shouldn’t be reading
this poem
she got off easy tho Selma cuz her folks
Harry and Liz
they are so old money
you know the type
penthouse on Park Avenue 3 Cézannes
4 Douanier Rousseaus
chippendales in every room
they’re loaded
(not that I care)
Selma is married to Rock
who is superfamous
but word has it their marriage is
on the rocks
If you don’t know who the hell Rock is
you shouldn’t be reading poems
at all
well
I’ve filled about three pages
of this almost-square
city lights pocket poet series paper
and I’m about to call it a day
did I mention my name was Frank?
you probably knew that already
from reading Ulysse’s poem
about moi
tho I never
mentioned him in any
poem of mine
why is that you may ask?
he’s nowhere near as famous
as I am
2023
November 3, 2017
This is a "What the--?" collection of poems. One of those deals where you read through the bush of your eyebrows because you're frowning and wondering how poems written in the 50s and early 60s could be so unlike Ike (or even Camelot before the Dealey went down).
It's non sequiturs uber alles, for the most part, and some name-dropping (and even picking-up) like Lana Turner and, multiple times, Frank's buddies (Kenneth Koch, Allen Ginsberg, etc.) who all make cameos smiling sheepishly. More funny than poetic. Maybe this is a predecessor to Dean Young. Younger still, I mean. I don't really know. For instance, one poem ("Steps") begins like so:
How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget's steeple leaning a little to the left
and ends like so:
oh god it's wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much
Man, those were the days--when you could quaff coffee till noon (if you weren't sleeping till noon), wake up, and have a pack of cigarettes for lunch while falling in love. Today? Everything comes with asterisks, alas....
It's non sequiturs uber alles, for the most part, and some name-dropping (and even picking-up) like Lana Turner and, multiple times, Frank's buddies (Kenneth Koch, Allen Ginsberg, etc.) who all make cameos smiling sheepishly. More funny than poetic. Maybe this is a predecessor to Dean Young. Younger still, I mean. I don't really know. For instance, one poem ("Steps") begins like so:
How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget's steeple leaning a little to the left
and ends like so:
oh god it's wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much
Man, those were the days--when you could quaff coffee till noon (if you weren't sleeping till noon), wake up, and have a pack of cigarettes for lunch while falling in love. Today? Everything comes with asterisks, alas....
March 31, 2023
I read a softcover copy of LUNCH POEMS by Frank O'Hara.
Not too many people read poetry these days, so I will resist my urge to analyze the style of the poems I found in this slim volume. But I will say I interpret this collection as Frank's love letter to a city for whom he had very strong and mixed feelings. I'm talking of course about New York.
LUNCH POEMS will never stop amazing me. This reading, I am struck, completely bowled over by these lines from "Galanta": the about-to-be / dead surrounding the already surrounded folk- / hero with a veil of automobile accidents / p79
These lines are more than just achingly beautiful, they are apparently prescient. Frank O'Hara died a very young man, tragically, a victim of a hit and run. He had just begun to enjoy his well-deserved renown and reap the rewards of being an established twentieth century writer when he was killed.
O'Hara will always be one of my favorite poets. He is a tragic, romantic figure. His poetry finds what is both tragic and romantic in everything, and I love that. His poetry is easy to understand, while it is also wildly absurd and surrealistic. He is everyone's poet.
Rating: 🚕🚕🚕🚕🚕 / 5 f--king cars
Recommend: Definitely, give it a try!
Finished: March 28 2023
Not too many people read poetry these days, so I will resist my urge to analyze the style of the poems I found in this slim volume. But I will say I interpret this collection as Frank's love letter to a city for whom he had very strong and mixed feelings. I'm talking of course about New York.
LUNCH POEMS will never stop amazing me. This reading, I am struck, completely bowled over by these lines from "Galanta": the about-to-be / dead surrounding the already surrounded folk- / hero with a veil of automobile accidents / p79
These lines are more than just achingly beautiful, they are apparently prescient. Frank O'Hara died a very young man, tragically, a victim of a hit and run. He had just begun to enjoy his well-deserved renown and reap the rewards of being an established twentieth century writer when he was killed.
O'Hara will always be one of my favorite poets. He is a tragic, romantic figure. His poetry finds what is both tragic and romantic in everything, and I love that. His poetry is easy to understand, while it is also wildly absurd and surrealistic. He is everyone's poet.
Rating: 🚕🚕🚕🚕🚕 / 5 f--king cars
Recommend: Definitely, give it a try!
Finished: March 28 2023
April 17, 2021
I'm so damned literary
and at the same time the waters rushing past remind
me of nothing
I have to admit I was caught unprepared by the muscular images of these reveries. The questioning at the core appears against the grain of consumption and conformity. O'Hara isn't proclaiming a revolt but just asking questions. I admit to not knowing much of his biography, but the ideas being bandied about appear earnest, not that the liberation ethics of the more popular Beats were not.
I can’t even find a pond small enough
to drown in without being ostentatious
I told Joel that I didn't see Bukowski in these lines but rather a memory of Crane and Whitman. Perhaps I'm mistaken.
Reread 4.17.2021
I found myself moved by these again this last week. An element of this reaction was to question whether I have as much fun as is conveyed in this delightful verse.
and at the same time the waters rushing past remind
me of nothing
I have to admit I was caught unprepared by the muscular images of these reveries. The questioning at the core appears against the grain of consumption and conformity. O'Hara isn't proclaiming a revolt but just asking questions. I admit to not knowing much of his biography, but the ideas being bandied about appear earnest, not that the liberation ethics of the more popular Beats were not.
I can’t even find a pond small enough
to drown in without being ostentatious
I told Joel that I didn't see Bukowski in these lines but rather a memory of Crane and Whitman. Perhaps I'm mistaken.
Reread 4.17.2021
I found myself moved by these again this last week. An element of this reaction was to question whether I have as much fun as is conveyed in this delightful verse.
July 23, 2024
“oh god it's wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much.”
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much.”
June 7, 2024
read this during jury duty 🙏 not a poetry connoisseur don’t ask me anything
August 14, 2021
the world becomes a jangle
I confessed in another review recently that I have trouble connecting with some of the more abstract and postmodern offshoots of contemporary poetry. "[S]trings of images with no clear connective tissue" was how I put it in that review, and I still think that's an apt enough (though no-doubt reductive) description of a lot of what shows up in literary journals and chapbooks these days.
But then I read something like Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems and realize that maybe it's not the string-of-images format I have a problem with at all, just the way it's usually executed. While I'm sure you could trace predecessors back 200 years if you wanted, O'Hara was, as far as I'm aware, one of the founders of that whole structurally-informal, free-association school of poetry we all know and have opinions about today. He was affiliated with the so-called New York School of poets and was a friend and inspiration to some of the key figures of the Beat movement (Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti—actually it was LF who first published this book), but his poems feel loose and free-ranging even by the Beats' standards. He flits and meanders, he changes the subject mid-thought, he throws all rules of grammar and punctuation and syntax to the wind. These are poems marked by a certain glee, a joy of expression for its own sake, a lightness that buoys even the most brokenhearted and world-weary selections. And I think it's exactly that quality—that infectious gleefulness, that buoyancy—that pulls the whole experiment together and makes O'Hara's work feel fresh and alive long after the too-early death of the poet himself. Whatever abuses his style may now suffer at other hands, it certainly didn't suffer them at his.
I guess it's kind of like how what we call "magical realism" started out as a bunch of individual writers playing with form and doing their own thing in exciting new ways, but now that it's been thoroughly defined and codified as a genre and aped to oblivion most Magical Realist™ fiction is just the same dreary, obvious story about, I don’t know, a listless couple in Brooklyn who can't conceive a child and then a hedge starts growing down the middle of their bed or something. (Please don't steal this idea, there may be money in it.) You get so tired of the derivations that you forget what was supposed to be revolutionary about the thing to begin with, till you go back to one of those early progenitors and it knocks you off your feet all over again.
Look, at the end of the day I couldn't tell you what pretty much any of the poems in this collection "mean." There are a few (the one about only shitting once per week comes to mind) I'm not sure I'd even say are any good. I read the whole book in a state of pleasant confusion, entirely disoriented but along for the ride nonetheless. And once I picked it up I always wanted to keep going. You could, if you were inclined to such grand comparisons, say that it's a little like life itself in that regard.
and surely we shall not continue to be unhappy
we shall be happy
but we shall continue to be ourselves everything
continues to be possible
René Char, Pierre Reverdy, Samuel Beckett it is possible isn't it
I love Reverdy for saying yes, though I don't believe it
Or, if that's too melancholy a closer:
oh god it's wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much
----
EDIT July 2021: Here's a very good recent poem by Julian Talmantez Brolaski examining the racism and racial exotification which occur throughout Lunch Poems. I won't try to excuse myself for failing to mention this nasty side of the collection when I initially reviewed it three years ago; it's definitely there and needs to be discussed.
I confessed in another review recently that I have trouble connecting with some of the more abstract and postmodern offshoots of contemporary poetry. "[S]trings of images with no clear connective tissue" was how I put it in that review, and I still think that's an apt enough (though no-doubt reductive) description of a lot of what shows up in literary journals and chapbooks these days.
But then I read something like Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems and realize that maybe it's not the string-of-images format I have a problem with at all, just the way it's usually executed. While I'm sure you could trace predecessors back 200 years if you wanted, O'Hara was, as far as I'm aware, one of the founders of that whole structurally-informal, free-association school of poetry we all know and have opinions about today. He was affiliated with the so-called New York School of poets and was a friend and inspiration to some of the key figures of the Beat movement (Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti—actually it was LF who first published this book), but his poems feel loose and free-ranging even by the Beats' standards. He flits and meanders, he changes the subject mid-thought, he throws all rules of grammar and punctuation and syntax to the wind. These are poems marked by a certain glee, a joy of expression for its own sake, a lightness that buoys even the most brokenhearted and world-weary selections. And I think it's exactly that quality—that infectious gleefulness, that buoyancy—that pulls the whole experiment together and makes O'Hara's work feel fresh and alive long after the too-early death of the poet himself. Whatever abuses his style may now suffer at other hands, it certainly didn't suffer them at his.
I guess it's kind of like how what we call "magical realism" started out as a bunch of individual writers playing with form and doing their own thing in exciting new ways, but now that it's been thoroughly defined and codified as a genre and aped to oblivion most Magical Realist™ fiction is just the same dreary, obvious story about, I don’t know, a listless couple in Brooklyn who can't conceive a child and then a hedge starts growing down the middle of their bed or something. (Please don't steal this idea, there may be money in it.) You get so tired of the derivations that you forget what was supposed to be revolutionary about the thing to begin with, till you go back to one of those early progenitors and it knocks you off your feet all over again.
Look, at the end of the day I couldn't tell you what pretty much any of the poems in this collection "mean." There are a few (the one about only shitting once per week comes to mind) I'm not sure I'd even say are any good. I read the whole book in a state of pleasant confusion, entirely disoriented but along for the ride nonetheless. And once I picked it up I always wanted to keep going. You could, if you were inclined to such grand comparisons, say that it's a little like life itself in that regard.
and surely we shall not continue to be unhappy
we shall be happy
but we shall continue to be ourselves everything
continues to be possible
René Char, Pierre Reverdy, Samuel Beckett it is possible isn't it
I love Reverdy for saying yes, though I don't believe it
Or, if that's too melancholy a closer:
oh god it's wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much
----
EDIT July 2021: Here's a very good recent poem by Julian Talmantez Brolaski examining the racism and racial exotification which occur throughout Lunch Poems. I won't try to excuse myself for failing to mention this nasty side of the collection when I initially reviewed it three years ago; it's definitely there and needs to be discussed.
December 10, 2017
“oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much”
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much”
Read
January 15, 2015Some days the patina of sadness that accretes on everything like the residue of Time itself, the film or layer of mortality that is probably only a phenomenon of our seeing being somehow linked with our memories, that glistens and coats our world as we pass through it, is undeniable and becomes as much a factor of our environment as that grey and yellow winter light, that is somewhere between sunlight and moonlight, but objects retreat into it, like those squeaks from the floor, or those white walls, or those flags billowing crazily in cold wind. And we can’t relive our memories so we have to care for them, someone sang that just now, and I read that we walk through everything we can never retrieve, all the time. Feeling that, and how it’s connected to how we apprehend the thing at hand. Words stand still and retrievable at the heart of motion, when written, is why I love books so much. I think it has to do with passing. And from this stage I’ll pass too and into another milieu, and without writing it will all shapeshift, it will still be mine, but so radically different that I am, through memory, a stranger. Scribble out a few things to immunize them against Time. But always falling and echoing away, especially the things that hit me hardest. I’ll shift my coordinates again, and steel myself for the next hour. It’s lunchtime, I’m out the door, through another door, into another set of infinitely expanding stage wings. Wings that can’t fly, they expand horizontally. It’s lunchtime and the noise of the day vibrates the patina in interesting ways. Poems sometimes help.
October 29, 2019
the cashier asked if we were related, I wish 😩
October 6, 2021
Iznikao iz Vitmanovih „Vlati trave”, O’Hara je svojim harizmatičnim delom pokazao kako da danas mislimo poeziju i mislimo o poeziji. Deluju nam njegovi stihovi profano, obično, pa i već viđeni, ali ono što je danas sveprisutni manir, nekad je bila zajapurena svežina i osvajanje novih lirskih teritorija. O’Hara je džezer u poeziji – njegove pesme su briljantne improvizacije, gde se slike u sinkopama ironično i duhovito koškaju. Poezija je i, jasno je iz samog naslova, obrok – samo što O’Harin „hleb i vino” postaju avokado i koka-kola, a ručak kao porodični obed se pretvara u usputnu (ali nipošto ne i nevažnu) užinu. Ti trenuci koje ukrademo od (radnog) dana, od drobilice u kojoj se svi nalazimo, predstavljaju posebne trenutke u-živ-anja, a pesma može biti bilo šta iz lova na svakodnevicu – od telefonskog razgovora do popisa tekućih zbivanja ili pregleda onoga što je zagolicalo oko lirskog ja.
Ništa O’Hara nije poharao. Na nama je da i dalje užinamo s njim.
Ništa O’Hara nije poharao. Na nama je da i dalje užinamo s njim.
September 23, 2014
Thanks to City Lights and Goodreads for the review copy.
O'Hara's poems were somewhat difficult to grasp and required an investment of time to understand and absorb. Written during his lunch breaks from the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) during the the late 50s and early 60s, this collection illuminates the conscience thought.
I think it's always a good thing to reveal consciousness through art, but it's also equally important to be able to understand the purpose of such revelations. Why are you letting us into your world? What do you want us to understand? Should we be altered by this understanding?
These are questions that I'm not sure O'Hara fully asked of his readers. I think he succeeds in expressing his thoughts through poetry, but were we, the readers, successful in grasping the purpose?
I had a difficult time answering with this collection. I enjoyed these poems as art, but I did have a hard time connecting with why O'Hara shared these. That's something I'd really like to know, and I think it would enhance my reading greatly. Perhaps there's an explanation out there somewhere.
"Mothers of America" was one of my favorites:
Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies!
get them out of the house so they won’t know what you’re up to
it’s true that fresh air is good for the body
but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images
and when you grow old as grow old you must
they won’t hate you
they won’t criticize you they won’t know
they’ll be in some glamorous country
they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey
they may even be grateful to you
for their first sexual experience
which only cost you a quarter
and didn’t upset the peaceful home
they will know where candy bars come from
and gratuitous bags of popcorn
as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it’s over
with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg
near the Williamsburg Bridge
oh mothers you will have made the little tykes
so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies
they won’t know the difference
and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy
and they’ll have been truly entertained either way
instead of hanging around the yard
or up in their room
hating you
prematurely since you won’t have done anything horribly mean yet
except keeping them from the darker joys
it’s unforgivable the latter
so don’t blame me if you won’t take this advice
and the family breaks up
and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set
seeing
movies you wouldn’t let them see when they were young
O'Hara's poems were somewhat difficult to grasp and required an investment of time to understand and absorb. Written during his lunch breaks from the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) during the the late 50s and early 60s, this collection illuminates the conscience thought.
I think it's always a good thing to reveal consciousness through art, but it's also equally important to be able to understand the purpose of such revelations. Why are you letting us into your world? What do you want us to understand? Should we be altered by this understanding?
These are questions that I'm not sure O'Hara fully asked of his readers. I think he succeeds in expressing his thoughts through poetry, but were we, the readers, successful in grasping the purpose?
I had a difficult time answering with this collection. I enjoyed these poems as art, but I did have a hard time connecting with why O'Hara shared these. That's something I'd really like to know, and I think it would enhance my reading greatly. Perhaps there's an explanation out there somewhere.
"Mothers of America" was one of my favorites:
Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies!
get them out of the house so they won’t know what you’re up to
it’s true that fresh air is good for the body
but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images
and when you grow old as grow old you must
they won’t hate you
they won’t criticize you they won’t know
they’ll be in some glamorous country
they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey
they may even be grateful to you
for their first sexual experience
which only cost you a quarter
and didn’t upset the peaceful home
they will know where candy bars come from
and gratuitous bags of popcorn
as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it’s over
with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg
near the Williamsburg Bridge
oh mothers you will have made the little tykes
so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies
they won’t know the difference
and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy
and they’ll have been truly entertained either way
instead of hanging around the yard
or up in their room
hating you
prematurely since you won’t have done anything horribly mean yet
except keeping them from the darker joys
it’s unforgivable the latter
so don’t blame me if you won’t take this advice
and the family breaks up
and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set
seeing
movies you wouldn’t let them see when they were young
May 31, 2020
Poesia desassossegada que evoca, a partir da experiência do autor, a América dos anos 50 e 60. Frank O'Hara não é poeta clássico nem seu antagonista. As palavras fluem sem aparente preocupação estética ou de gosto, como na boa spoken word de um Gil Scott-Heron, pairando entre o banal e o emocional, entre o agudo presente e a angústia do futuro. Se o desencanto parece unir quase todos os poemas, também o faz uma ironia fina que se lhe contrapõe, formando uma linguagem tão áspera quanto apetecível. É, por isso, um livro para ler em voz alta, com voz de Jon Hamm.
June 24, 2021
i read this last year and for some reason never wrote a proper review but since it's driving me a bit crazy that i keep seeing this man everywhere (even outside of academia) i just have to ask: why does everyone collectively ignore the open declarations of hatred and disgust for black and indigenous peoples in and outside of this collection? maybe you somehow liked his work enough to rate it highly but it just baffles me that no one in these reviews acknowledges it. it didn't put you off even a little bit? and it's of course always funny to me when someone does say something about o'hara's racism and a stream of his readers heartbrokenly proclaim that they "didn't know" and "oh how awful" it is to find this out... if you actually read his poems, you already knew. because the racism is literally inescapable. it's fucking everywhere.
i could go into detail and provide examples but i think julian talamantez brolaski's poem, which you can read here, does a much better job and is far more deserving of attention than o'hara's works or anything i could say about them.
i could go into detail and provide examples but i think julian talamantez brolaski's poem, which you can read here, does a much better job and is far more deserving of attention than o'hara's works or anything i could say about them.
September 25, 2016
Short poems that introduce the reader to the lovely poems of Frank O'Hara.
November 13, 2019
’Subways are only fun when you’re feeling sexy.’
January 18, 2008
These poems kept me grounded as I wandered listlessly through the streets of Paris seeking meaning, but finding only my own dim, drunken reflection. Like a true flaneur, with poems in my pocket and a steady supply of cigarettes, coffee, and alcohol-- I conquered apathy by swallowing it whole.
Memoir of Sergei O by Frank O'Hara
My feet have never been comfortable
since I pulled them out of the Black Sea
and came to your foul country
what fatal day did I dry them off for
travel loathsome travel to a world
even older than the one I grew up in
what fatal day meanwhile back in France
they were stumbling towards the Bastille
and the Princess de Lamballe was
shuddering as shudderingly as I
with a lot less to lose I still hated
to move sedentary as a roach of Tiflis
never again to go swimming in the nude
publicly little did I know how
awfulness could reach such perfection abroad
I even thought I would see a Red Indian
all I saw was lipstick everything
covered with grass or shrouds pretty
shrouds shot with silver and plasma
even the chairs are upholstered to a
smothering perfection of inanity
and there are no chandeliers and there
are no gates to the parks so you don't
know wheter you're going in them or
coming out of them that's not relaxing
and so you can't really walk all you can
do is sit and drink coffee and brood
over the lost leaves and refreshing scum
of Georgia Georgia of my heritage
and dismay meanwhile back in my old
country they are renaming everything so
I can't even tell any more which ballet
company I am remembering with so much
pain and the same thing has started
here American Avenue Park Avenue South
Avenue of Chester Conklin Binnie Barnes
Boulevard Avenue of Toby Wing Barbara
Nichols Street where am I what is it
I can't even find a pond small enough
to drown in without being ostentatious
you are ruining your awful country and me
it is not new to do this it is terribly
democratic and ordinary and tired
Memoir of Sergei O by Frank O'Hara
My feet have never been comfortable
since I pulled them out of the Black Sea
and came to your foul country
what fatal day did I dry them off for
travel loathsome travel to a world
even older than the one I grew up in
what fatal day meanwhile back in France
they were stumbling towards the Bastille
and the Princess de Lamballe was
shuddering as shudderingly as I
with a lot less to lose I still hated
to move sedentary as a roach of Tiflis
never again to go swimming in the nude
publicly little did I know how
awfulness could reach such perfection abroad
I even thought I would see a Red Indian
all I saw was lipstick everything
covered with grass or shrouds pretty
shrouds shot with silver and plasma
even the chairs are upholstered to a
smothering perfection of inanity
and there are no chandeliers and there
are no gates to the parks so you don't
know wheter you're going in them or
coming out of them that's not relaxing
and so you can't really walk all you can
do is sit and drink coffee and brood
over the lost leaves and refreshing scum
of Georgia Georgia of my heritage
and dismay meanwhile back in my old
country they are renaming everything so
I can't even tell any more which ballet
company I am remembering with so much
pain and the same thing has started
here American Avenue Park Avenue South
Avenue of Chester Conklin Binnie Barnes
Boulevard Avenue of Toby Wing Barbara
Nichols Street where am I what is it
I can't even find a pond small enough
to drown in without being ostentatious
you are ruining your awful country and me
it is not new to do this it is terribly
democratic and ordinary and tired
May 30, 2022
I ran across the poem "A Step Away from Them" and bought this collection. I have read through it, listened to it on Audible. This is a collection of proto-beat poems that sets the foundation for many will build on. The poems "Song" "The Day Lady Died" and "Steps" are standout poems in this collection.
May 28, 2021
“a glass of papaya juice
and back to work. my heart is in my pocket,”
it is lunch poems by frank o’hara
and back to work. my heart is in my pocket,”
it is lunch poems by frank o’hara
August 13, 2018
Maybe it would be better were I American.
August 21, 2023
perhaps I loved Lunch Poems just that little bit more due to reading it all while sitting at a table in a sunny new york park, slightly dazed by the summer heat. or maybe I would have loved it just as much anywhere else. either way, something about this collection gently prodded at my heart the way only the best poetry does. O'Hara's distinct poetic voice and tone spoke clearly, personally, obliquely, ironically. it's a love letter to a city, a glimmering pinpoint in time, painted in vibrant brushstrokes and strung up, preserved in all its bustling imperfections. immediately after I turned the last page I wanted to re-read it. so many beautiful lines and stanzas struck me with their earnestness and quiet, quotidian beauty. I adored it.
July 27, 2016
O'hara's poetry is human and chaotic. He was clearly a very sensitive person swayed and influenced by his surroundings, his mood is acutely intuned by the things he's seen and read, the city he lives in and the people he loves. Of course, that sounds a bit ridiculous, because who isn't? but to him, they make their way to his every poem, making them maybe hard to read for some, all the allusions, sometimes even to to people we'll never know, people in his life (I guess that's just a reference then, not an allusion!) but to me, they just make the poems more personal, it's really not the details that matter it's the mood and the person and the fleeting moment being caught and displayed in a poem.
March 21, 2024
4,5
nunca entiendo a los beat y para siquiera diseccionar un poema de lunch poems tendría que pasarme una hora buscando las cien mil referencias pero es que es hipnótico es hipnótico lo lees en alto (y te pide que lo leas en alto) y es como un cántico o una invovación es un retrato perfecto del nueva york de la época de la américa destruida por la guerra y gobernada por el consumismo y el acero y los rascacielos y es precioso y terrorífico y está lleno de humor y de palabras hiladas aparentemente al azar cuando está medido al milímetro y yo estoy loca
nunca entiendo a los beat y para siquiera diseccionar un poema de lunch poems tendría que pasarme una hora buscando las cien mil referencias pero es que es hipnótico es hipnótico lo lees en alto (y te pide que lo leas en alto) y es como un cántico o una invovación es un retrato perfecto del nueva york de la época de la américa destruida por la guerra y gobernada por el consumismo y el acero y los rascacielos y es precioso y terrorífico y está lleno de humor y de palabras hiladas aparentemente al azar cuando está medido al milímetro y yo estoy loca
March 26, 2023
some og new york camp.
June 18, 2020
Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara (1964)
Here are my favorite half dozen of the thirty-seven poems in this collection. Many of these poems, perhaps all, were penned on O’Hara’s lunch hours while working in Manhattan. Some of the poems are hard to decipher contextually but the vast majority are straightforward enough for self-interpretation for a lay reader like myself.
1. A Step Away From Them - a wonderfully vivid and exemplary poem from the 1950’s as O’Hara walks around Manhattan on his lunch break just observing.
2. Song short rant on the dirtiness of the city figuratively and literally.
3. The Day Lady Died Perhaps his most famous poem. A beautiful elegy to Billie Holiday when she died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1959.
4. Personal Poem Another lunchtime errand poem, a little more reflective as the author wonders if anyone in the city is thinking of him.
5. Cornkind Author imagines his son taking his place in the world. He is concerned though that his son doesn’t appreciate historical figures like Bette Davis and Hart Crane. Will their legacies die with the people of their era.
6. Ave Maria A pitch to the mothers of America to let their children make mistakes even the more serious ones. Not sure I agree with the advice but thought provoking nonetheless.
4.5 stars. A great glimpse into a middle class man’s life who has an avant-garde perspective of the big city.
Here are my favorite half dozen of the thirty-seven poems in this collection. Many of these poems, perhaps all, were penned on O’Hara’s lunch hours while working in Manhattan. Some of the poems are hard to decipher contextually but the vast majority are straightforward enough for self-interpretation for a lay reader like myself.
1. A Step Away From Them - a wonderfully vivid and exemplary poem from the 1950’s as O’Hara walks around Manhattan on his lunch break just observing.
2. Song short rant on the dirtiness of the city figuratively and literally.
3. The Day Lady Died Perhaps his most famous poem. A beautiful elegy to Billie Holiday when she died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1959.
4. Personal Poem Another lunchtime errand poem, a little more reflective as the author wonders if anyone in the city is thinking of him.
5. Cornkind Author imagines his son taking his place in the world. He is concerned though that his son doesn’t appreciate historical figures like Bette Davis and Hart Crane. Will their legacies die with the people of their era.
6. Ave Maria A pitch to the mothers of America to let their children make mistakes even the more serious ones. Not sure I agree with the advice but thought provoking nonetheless.
4.5 stars. A great glimpse into a middle class man’s life who has an avant-garde perspective of the big city.
March 11, 2008
“I’m so damned literary,” Frank O’Hara proclaims in his “Poem En Forme De Saw” and this exclamation is a succinct summation of his voice throughout this famous collection of work (68). And the fact that he says this in the voice of a saw indicates his great ability to combine high-brow intellectualism with an average Joe mentality. Using this combination, O’Hara documents the life of a writer who must work a day job, stealing poetic moments on lunch breaks and using vacation time as writing time. He finds beauty and poignancy as he wanders the streets of New York City and has intellectual debates with his friends about art, politics and love. This book, like Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems, makes a young writer such as myself dream of a bohemian utopia where poets and other artists live in shitty little apartments and spend hours debating the merits of last night’s open mic readers, before getting up hung over and working eight hours at a place where they tolerate “regular” people. Of course, upon further reflection, this is a book that actually shows us that this ideal place is everywhere, teeming from every building, car and person we pass. It’s just up to us to take a few moments and find it.
September 28, 2021
These are barely about lunch
Displaying 1 - 30 of 856 reviews