Tags: loving of art, sharing of art, art as object, art as experience, writing of art, imagery, syntax, information management, juxtaposition, repetition
We begin with one of the more playful poems of the series and a personal favorite of mine! I really enjoy the way O’Hara creates this complex interplay between works of art, his subject, and himself as the writer and manages for it to be quite lucid. This poem has inspired the next 3 poems presented in some way or form, and in large part gives shape to this anthology. This set of poems is largely focused on sharing of art.
Having a Coke with You
Frank O’Hara
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 for 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’m telling you about it
There’s a lot going on in this poem, but hopefully you’ve just read it straight through to start off. One of the first things to notice is how much repetition there is and how much it contributes to the flow and rhythm of the poem: there’s the listing of places in the first line, anaphora going on with the phrase “partly because”, the sequence “as still as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary”, and so on. These help create a playful tone of sorts and some levity is introduced by the breaking of standard syntax in the third example as well as elsewhere. This repetitive structure is also present in the second half of the poem, where O’Hara goes on to consider pieces of artwork that he loves and how his lover absolves them of their weight. The two subjects, the artwork and the lover, play off of each other: the more he loves one, the more he must love the other to even put it in conversation with the other, and so forth. It must be a really great piece of artwork if one would rather look at it than their lover, even only now and then! This work is done in large part via juxtaposition, and is seen in the first half as well, with pairs like his lover in their orange shirt and St. Sebastian as well as the couple themselves and their smiles compared to statues and people going about their day ordinarily.
This poem does a particularly interesting job with its information management.
First, we have some ambivalent descriptions to begin the poem. Like, golly, I’d hope having a coke with your lover is more fun than being sick to your stomach. And it’s unclear what relevance the yoghurt and the tulips have to any of this either, which also contributes to this somewhat indirect and playful mood.
Although several images are being created for us, unless one is unusually well-versed in art and travel, they’re likely not images that will instantly come to mind. Despite having no idea what the lover is being compared to, this poem still works really well! It doesn’t matter that I’ve no idea what St. Sebastian looks like because his lover is better and happier. It doesn’t matter that I can’t recall a single impressionist painting, they never used his lover as their subject and thus were all futile, as was Marino Marini though I don’t know anything about his rider. O’Hara makes sure to give us either enough detail about the piece of art or the relevant similiarities/differences between his lover and the piece of art so that we can keep nodding our heads and understanding what he feels toward his lover.
I personally had to look up the artistic objects so I’ve included a few here for you, though some may be wrong: Polish Rider; Marino Mairini “Rider”; Impressionism; Nude Descending a Staircase
In any case, O’Hara is creating this series of images of his lover in place of the subjects of these already beautiful and famous pieces of art to get across how strongly he feels about them, at the same time building a playful argument that all of these artists were fools (even though clearly they’re just “unlucky”) by virtue of not having met his lover despite all their hard work to make nice art. Art cannot be that beautiful or meaningful minus his lover, which clearly is not true for the majority of people who don’t even know who his lover is, but that’s beside the point.
O’Hara turns around and ends the poem in a very self-aware way by commenting on how his lover is the real (and better) version of the experience that everyone is trying to get out of (and convey) through artwork (and perhaps life in general), and as such he has taken it upon himself to make this here piece of art to share with others. Which is silly and lighthearted in that the poem knows it too shall fail, but refuses to acknowledge that one bit. And we then read the poem, perhaps thinking of someone we love to similar extent, and feel that the poem does not quite do justice to the exact ways and reasons for which we love said someone, which gives rise to the next 3 poems (two of which are my attempts, and one Mark Leidner’s).