Week Seven

Frank O’Hara

Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul

It is 12:10 in New York and I am wondering
if I will finish this in time to meet Norman for lunch
ah lunch! I think I am going crazy
what with my terrible hangover and the weekend coming up
at excitement-prone Kenneth Koch’s
I wish I were staying in town and working on my poems
at Joan’s studio for a new book by Grove Press
which they will probably not print
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
yesterday I looked up the rue Frémicourt on a map
and was happy to find it like a bird
flying over Paris et ses environs
which unfortunately did not include Seine-et-Oise
                                                                                 which I don’t know
as well as a number of other things
and Allen is back talking about god a lot
and Peter is back not talking very much
and Joe has a cold and is not coming to Kenneth’s
although he is coming to lunch with Norman
I suspect he is making a distinction
well, who isn’t
I wish I were reeling around Paris
instead of reeling around New York
I wish I weren’t reeling at all
it is Spring the ice has melted the Ricard is being poured
we are all happy and young and toothless
it is the same as old age
the only thing to do is simply continue
is that simple
yes, it is simple because it is the only thing to do
can you do it
yes, you can because it is the only thing to do
blue light over the Bois de Boulogne it continues
the Seine continues
the Louvre stays open it continues it hardly closes at all
the Bar Américain continues to be French
de Gaulle continues to be Algerian as does Camus
Shirley Goldfarb continues to be Shirley Goldfarb
and Jane Hazan continues to be Jane Freilicher (I think!)
and Irving Sandler continues to be the balayeur des artistes
and so do I (sometimes I think I’m “in love” with painting)
and surely the Piscine Deligny continues to have water in it
and the Flore continues to have tables and newspapers
                                                                           and people under them
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

Ann Arbor Variations

1

Wet heat drifts through the afternoon
like a campus dog, a fraternity ghost
waiting to stay home from football games.
The arches are empty clear to the sky.

Except for the leaves: those lashes of our
thinking and dreaming and drinking sight.
The spherical radiance, the Old English
look, the sum of our being, “hath perced
to the roote” all our springs and falls
and now rolls over our limpness, a daily
dragon. We lose our health in a love
of color, drown in a fountain of myriads,

as simply as children. It is too hot,
our birth was given up to screaming. Our
life on these street lawns seems silent.
The leaves chatter their comparisons

Augustus

Read Augustus on the Poetry Foundation site.

Aus Einem April

Read Aus Einem April on the Poetry Foundation site.

Ave Maria

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

Cambridge

Read Cambridge on the Poetry Foundation site.

Chez Jane

The white chocolate jar full of petals
swills odds and ends around in a dizzying eye
of four o’clocks now and to come. The tiger,
marvellously striped and irritable, leaps
on the table and without disturbing a hair
of the flowers’ breathless attention, pisses
into the pot, right down its delicate spout.
A whisper of steam goes up from that porcelain
urethra. “Saint-Saëns!” it seems to be whispering,
curling unerringly around the furry nuts
of the terrible puss, who is mentally flexing.
Ah be with me always, spirit of noisy
contemplation in the studio, the Garden
of Zoos, the eternally fixed afternoons!
There, while music scratches its scrofulous
stomach, the brute beast emerges and stands,
clear and careful, knowing always the exact peril
at this moment caressing his fangs with
a tongue given wholly to luxurious usages;
which only a moment before dropped aspirin
in this sunset of roses, and now throws a chair
in the air to aggravate the truly menacing.

The Day Lady Died

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me
I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
                                                        I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness
and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it
and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

Dido

Read Dido on the Poetry Foundation site.

Dolce Colloquio

Read Dolce Colloquio on the Poetry Foundation site.

The Eyelid Has Its Storms . . .

Read The Eyelid Has Its Storms . . .  on the Poetry Foundation site.

For James Dean

Read For James Dean on the Poetry Foundation Site.

For Janice and Kenneth to Voyage

Read For Janice and Kenneth Voyage on the Poetry Foundation site.

Homosexuality

Read Homosexuality on the Poetry Foundation site.

In Favor of One’s Time

Read In Favor of One’s Time on the Poetry Foundation site.

Intermezzo

Read Intermezzo on the Poetry Foundation site.

Lisztiana

Read Lisztiana on the Poetry Foundation site.

The Man Without a Country

Read The Man Without a Country on the Poetry Foundation site.

Maurice Ravel

Read Maurice Ravel on the Poetry Foundation site.

Mayakovsky

1
My heart’s aflutter!
I am standing in the bath tub
crying. Mother, mother
who am I? If he
will just come back once
and kiss me on the face
his coarse hair brush
my temple, it’s throbbing!
then I can put on my clothes
I guess, and walk the streets.
2
I love you. I love you,
but I’m turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.
Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,
and I’ll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.
Cannot please, cannot charm or win
what a poet!
and the clear water is thick
with bloody blows on its head.
I embrace a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.
3
That’s funny! there’s blood on my chest
oh yes, I’ve been carrying bricks
what a funny place to rupture!
and now it is raining on the ailanthus
as I step out onto the window ledge
the tracks below me are smoky and
glistening with a passion for running
I leap into the leaves, green like the sea
4
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.
It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

Meditations in an Emergency

    Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious as if I were French?

Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there’ll be nothing left with which to venture forth.

Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change?

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don’t I? I’m just like a pile of leaves.

However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. 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. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they’re missing? Uh huh.

My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them still. If only I had grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; I would stay at home and do something. It’s not that I am curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it’s my duty to be attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can spare myself little sleep.

Now there is only one man I love to kiss when he is unshaven. Heterosexuality! you are inexorably approaching. (How discourage her?)

St. Serapion, I wrap myself in the robes of your whiteness which is like midnight in Dostoevsky. How am I to become a legend, my dear? I’ve tried love, but that hides you in the bosom of another and I am always springing forth from it like the lotus—the ecstasy of always bursting forth! (but one must not be distracted by it!) or like a hyacinth, “to keep the filth of life away,” yes, there, even in the heart, where the filth is pumped in and courses and slanders and pollutes and determines. I will my will, though I may become famous for a mysterious vacancy in that department, that greenhouse.

Destroy yourself, if you don’t know!

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you’ve set. It’s like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.

“Fanny Brown is run away—scampered off with a Cornet of Horse; I do love that little Minx, & hope She may be happy, tho’ She has vexed me by this Exploit a little too. —Poor silly Cecchina! or F:B: as we used to call her. —I wish She had a good Whipping and 10,000 pounds.” —Mrs. Thrale.

I’ve got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I’ll be back, I’ll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don’t want me to go where you go, so I go where you don’t want me to. It’s only afternoon, there’s a lot ahead. There won’t be any mail downstairs. Turning, I spit in the lock and the knob turns.

The Mike Goldberg Variations

Read The Mike Goldberg Variations on the Poetry Foundation site.

Noir Cacadou, or the Fatal Music of War

Read Noir Cacadou, or the Fatal Music of War on the Poetry Foundation site.

A Note to Harold Fondren

Read A Note to Harold Fondren on the Poetry Foundation site.

Now It Is Light . . .

Read Now It Is Light . . . on the Poetry Foundation site.

On a Mountain

Read On a Mountain on the Poetry Foundation site.

On Rachmaninoff’s Birthday

Read On Rachmaninoff’s Birthday on the Poetry Foundation site.

On Seeing Larry Rivers’ “Washington Crossing the Delaware” at the Museum of Modern Art

Read On Seeing Larry Rivers’ “Washington Crossing the Delaware” at the Museum of Modern Art on the Poetry Foundation site.

Personal Poem

Now when I walk around at lunchtime
I have only two charms in my pocket
an old Roman coin Mike Kanemitsu gave me
and a bolt-head that broke off a packing case
when I was in Madrid the others never
brought me too much luck though they did
help keep me in New York against coercion
but now I’m happy for a time and interested
I walk through the luminous humidity
passing the House of Seagram with its wet
and its loungers and the construction to
the left that closed the sidewalk if
I ever get to be a construction worker
I’d like to have a silver hat please
and get to Moriarty’s where I wait for
LeRoi and hear who wants to be a mover and
shaker the last five years my batting average
is .016 that’s that, and LeRoi comes in
and tells me Miles Davis was clubbed 12
times last night outside birdland by a cop
a lady asks us for a nickel for a terrible
disease but we don’t give her one we
don’t like terrible diseases, then
we go eat some fish and some ale it’s
cool but crowded we don’t like Lionel Trilling
we decide, we like Don Allen we don’t like
Henry James so much we like Herman Melville
we don’t want to be in the poets’ walk in
San Francisco even we just want to be rich
and walk on girders in our silver hats
I wonder if one person out of the 8,000,000 is
thinking of me as I shake hands with LeRoi
and buy a strap for my wristwatch and go
back to work happy at the thought possibly so

Places for Oscar Salvador

Read Places for Oscar Salvador on the Poetry Foundation site.

Poem “À la recherche d’ Gertrude Stein”

When I am feeling depressed and anxious sullen
all you have to do is take your clothes off
and all is wiped away revealing life’s tenderness
that we are flesh and breathe and are near us
as you are really as you are I become as I
really am alive and knowing vaguely what is
and what is important to me above the intrusions
of incident and accidental relationships
which have nothing to do with my life
when I am in your presence I feel life is strong
and will defeat all its enemies and all of mine
and all of yours and yours in you and mine in me
sick logic and feeble reasoning are cured
by the perfect symmetry of your arms and legs
spread out making an eternal circle together
creating a golden pillar beside the Atlantic
the faint line of hair dividing your torso
gives my mind rest and emotions their release
into the infinite air where since once we are
together we always will be in this life come what may

Poem (At night Chinamen jump)

At night Chinamen jump
on Asia with a thump

while in our willful way
we, in secret, play

affectionate games and bruise
our knees like China’s shoes.

The birds push apples through
grass the moon turns blue,

these apples roll beneath
our buttocks like a heath

full of Chinese thrushes
flushed from China’s bushes.

As we love at night
birds sing out of sight,

Chinese rhythms beat
through us in our heat,

the apples and the birds
move us like soft words,

we couple in the grace
of that mysterious race.

Poem (“Green things are flowers…”

Read Poem (“Green things are flowers…”) on the Poetry Foundation site.

Poem (“Hate is only one…”)

Read Poem (“Hate is only one…”) on the Poetry Foundation site.

Poem (“I am not sure…”)

Read Poem (“I am not sure…”) on the Poetry Foundation site.

Poem in January

Read Poem in January on the Poetry Foundation site.

Poem (“Instant coffee with…”)

Read Poem (“Instant coffee with…”) on the Poetry Foundation site.

Poem [“Khrushchev is coming on the right day!”]

 

Krushchev is coming on the right day!
                                                                      the cool graced light
is pushed off the enormous glass piers by hard wind
and everything is tossing, hurrying on up
                                                                             this country
has everything but politesse, a Puerto Rican cab driver says
and five different girls I see
                                                   look like Piedie Gimbel
with her blonde hair tossing too,
                                                           as she looked when I pushed
her little daughter on the swing on the lawn it was also windy
last night we went to a movie and came out,
                                                                                Ionesco is greater
than Beckett, Vincent said, that’s what I think, blueberry blintzes
and Khrushcev was probably being carped at
                                                                         in Washington, no
                                                                                                         politesse
Vincent tells me about his mother’s trip to Sweden
                                                                                                Hans tells us
about his father’s life in Sweden, it sounds like Grace Hartigan’s
painting Sweden
                              so I go home to bed and names drift through my
                                                                                                                   head
Purgatorio Merchado, Gerhard Schwartz and Gaspar Gonzales,
               all unknown figures of the early morning as I go to work
where does the evil of the year go
                                                            when September takes New York
and turns it into ozone stalagmites
                                                             deposits of light
                                                             so I get back up
make coffee, and read François Villon, his life, so dark
         New York seems blinding and my tie is blowing up the street
I wish it would blow off
                                        though it is cold and somewhat warms
                                                                                                     my neck
as the train bears Krushchev on to Pennsylvania Station
         and the light seems to be eternal
         and joy seems to be inexorable
         I am foolish enough always to find it in wind

Poem [“Lana Turner has collapsed!”]

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
lana turner has collapsed!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

Poem [“The eager note on my door said, ‘Call me,’”]

The eager note on my door said “Call me,
call when you get in!” so I quickly threw
a few tangerines into my overnight bag,
straightened my eyelids and shoulders, and
headed straight for the door. It was autumn
by the time I got around the corner, oh all
unwilling to be either pertinent or bemused, but
the leaves were brighter than grass on the sidewalk!
Funny, I thought, that the lights are on this late
and the hall door open; still up at this hour, a
champion jai-alai player like himself? Oh fie!
for shame! What a host, so zealous! And he was
there in the hall, flat on a sheet of blood that
ran down the stairs. I did appreciate it. There are few
hosts who so thoroughly prepare to greet a guest
only casually invited, and that several months ago.

Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, as Perdita

Read Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, as Perdita on the Poetry Foundation site.

Radio

Read Radio on the Poetry Foundation site.

Rhapsody

515 Madison Avenue
door to heaven? portal
stopped realities and eternal licentiousness
or at least the jungle of impossible eagerness
your marble is bronze and your lianas elevator cables
swinging from the myth of ascending
I would join
or declining the challenge of racial attractions
they zing on (into the lynch, dear friends)
while everywhere love is breathing draftily
like a doorway linking 53rd with 54th
the east-bound with the west-bound traffic by 8,000,000s
o midtown tunnels and the tunnels, too, of Holland
where is the summit where all aims are clear
the pin-point light upon a fear of lust
as agony’s needlework grows up around the unicorn
and fences him for milk- and yoghurt-work
when I see Gianni I know he’s thinking of John Ericson
playing the Rachmaninoff 2nd or Elizabeth Taylor
taking sleeping-pills and Jane thinks of Manderley
and Irkutsk while I cough lightly in the smog of desire
and my eyes water achingly imitating the true blue
a sight of Manahatta in the towering needle
multi-faceted insight of the fly in the stringless labyrinth
Canada plans a higher place than the Empire State Building
I am getting into a cab at 9th Street and 1st Avenue
and the Negro driver tells me about a $120 apartment
“where you can’t walk across the floor after 10 at night
not even to pee, cause it keeps them awake downstairs”
no, I don’t like that “well, I didn’t take it”
perfect in the hot humid morning on my way to work
a little supper-club conversation for the mill of the gods
you were there always and you know all about these things
as indifferent as an encyclopedia with your calm brown eyes
it isn’t enough to smile when you run the gauntlet
you’ve got to spit like Niagara Falls on everybody or
Victoria Falls or at least the beautiful urban fountains of Madrid
as the Niger joins the Gulf of Guinea near the Menemsha Bar
that is what you learn in the early morning passing Madison Avenue
where you’ve never spent any time and stores eat up light
I have always wanted to be near it
though the day is long (and I don’t mean Madison Avenue)
lying in a hammock on St. Mark’s Place sorting my poems
in the rancid nourishment of this mountainous island
they are coming and we holy ones must go
is Tibet historically a part of China? as I historically
belong to the enormous bliss of American death

Romanze, or the Music Students

Read Romanze, or the Music Students on the Poetry Foundation site.

Room

Read Room on the Poetry Foundation site.

Round Objects

Read Round Objects on the Poetry Foundation site.

Saint

Read Saint on the Poetry Foundation site.

Serenade

Read Serenade on the Poetry Foundation site.

A Step Away from Them

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 atJULIET’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 forBULLFIGHTand
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.

Sudden Snow

Read Sudden Snow on the Poetry Foundation site.

To the Harbormaster

I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.

To You

Read To You on the Poetry Foundation site.

The Tomb of Arnold Schoenberg

Read The Tomb of Arnold Schoenberg on the Poetry Foundation site.

Unicorn

Read Unicorn on the Poetry Foundation site.

Variations on Pasternak’s “Mein Liebchen, Was Willst Du Noch Mehr?”

Read Variations on Pasternak’s “Mein Liebchen, Was Willst Du Noch Mehr?” on the Poetry Foundation site.

Walking

Read Walking on the Poetry Foundation site.

Walking to Work

Read Walking to Work on the Poetry Foundation site.

A Wreath for John Wheelwright

Read A Wreath for John Wheelwright on the Poetry Foundation site.


Sources

“Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Ann Arbor Variations” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Augustus” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Aus Einem April” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Ave Maria” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Cambridge” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Chez Jane” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“The Day Lady Died” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Dido” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Dolce Colloquio” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“The Eyelid Has Its Storms…” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“For James Dean” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“For Janice and Kenneth to Voyage” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Homosexuality” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“In Favor of One’s Time” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Intermezzo” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Lisztiana” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“The Man Without a Country” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Maurice Ravel” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Mayakovsky” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Meditations in an Emergency” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“The Mike Goldberg Variations” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Noir Cacadou, or the Fatal Music of War” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“A Note to Harold Fondren” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Now It Is Light…” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“On a Mountain” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“On Rachmaninoff’s Birthday” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“On Seeing Larry Rivers’ “Washington Crossing the Delaware” at the Museum of Modern Art” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Personal Poem” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Places for Oscar Salvador” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Poem ‘À la recherche d’ Gertrude Stein’” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Poem (At night Chinamen jump)” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Poem (Green things are flowers…)” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Poem (Hate is only one…)” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Poem (I am not sure…)” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Poem in January” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Poem (Instant coffee with…)” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Poem [“Khrushchev is coming on the right day!”]” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Poem [“Lana Turner has collapsed!”] by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Poem [“The eager note on my door said, ‘Call me,’”]” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, as Perdita” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Radio” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Rhapsody” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Romanze, or the Music Students” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Room” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Round Objects” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Saint” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Serenade” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“A Step Away from Them” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Sudden Snow” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“To the Harbormaster” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“To You” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“The Tomb of Arnold Schoenberg” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Unicorn” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Variations on Pasternak’s “Mein Liebchen, Was Willst Du Noch Mehr?” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Walking” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“Walking to Work” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

“A Wreath for John Wheelwright” by Frank O’Hara is in the public domain. This version was retrieved from Poetry Foundation.

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Poetry and Poetics Copyright © 2021 by is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.