Track Changes

Frank O’Hara only lived in New York for fifteen years, from 1951 until his untimely death in 1966, but his poems are synonymous with the city.

O’Hara was a New Yorker, although he was originally from Baltimore. He was a very urbane gay man. Trained as a pianist, he called writing “playing the typewriter”. He died on Fire Island at forty, when he was run over by a dune buggy.

To say Frank O’Hara is one of my favourite poets is like saying Monet is one of my favourite painters. He’s one of the only poets I know, so the field is limited.

But I like how unpretentious his poems are. They aren’t concerned with meter or rhyme or really structure at all. He “sprayed words through a fire hose,” according to Dan Chiasson.

Painting and O’Hara are closely linked. He hung out with Jackson Pollack and Willem de Kooning. He worked as an assistant curator at MoMA.

His poems try to capture time and to stop it. Prevent it from slipping away. His writing is full of place names, events and people that situate him in a very particular time and place. As if he doesn’t want to forget anything. Trying to stop, yet unable to stop, the passing of time.

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 not 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 then now if you were with me O you

were the best of all my days

Animals, Frank O’Hara