description can be found in “John Button Birthday”:

  And in 1984 I trust we’ll stillbe high together. I’ll say “Let’s go to a bar”and you’ll say “Let’s go to a movie” and we’ll go to  both;like two old Chinese drunkards arguing about  theirfavorite mountain and the million reasons for  them both.

For O’Hara, every experience, even the most trivial, can become a poetic element. Poetry for O’Hara was made up not of grand moments but of small ones, especially those with friends, which the poet’s voice singles out and exults over. Critic Marjorie Perloff has noted that O’Hara’s “poetic world is one of immanence rather than transcendence.”

Painters and painting were often the subjects of O’Hara’s poems, and at times he used the structure of modern art in this poems. “Why I Am Not a Painter,” paradoxically, is a good example of O’Hara’s use of painting as subject and form. He describes a painter’s process of inclusion and exclusion and contrasts it to his own method. Both the poet’s and the painter’s methods, however, are strikingly similar, as are the results. Both works are generated by an early impulse that may not exist in the completed work except as a remnant in the title. Neither art relies on logical form but rather on the path the work itself seems to take. Above all, the creation of a work of art—a painting or a poem—is something that cannot be consciously explained; some mystery about how it is brought about remains.

O’Hara’s word choice is interesting. One of his favorite techniques is the use of exotic and strange words, which are often strung together: “Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!/ You really are beautiful! Pearls,/ harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins!” O’Hara loves the sound of words for their own sake and for their strangeness. There is no attempt to transform such an amusing pattern of words into symbolic meaning; the pattern exists for its own sake.

O’Hara uses meter or rhyme only for effect, as in such lines as “At night Chinamen jump/ on Asia with a thump.” The effect is comic rather than formal. The poetic line, however, is an important structural unit in O’Hara’s poetry. Most of the lines run on, creating the effect of breathless conversation or suggesting the exuberance of a speaker as exulting over the wonder of life in all of its variety. O’Hara makes no attempt to keep his lines to similar metrical lengths, although he does attempt at times to create a visual design out of a series of lines.

“To the Film Industry in Crisis”

First published: 1957 (collected in The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, 1971, 1995)

Type of work: Poem

A humorous celebration of the populist and mythic values of American films.

“To the Film Industry in Crisis” is a love letter from O’Hara to the most popular and accessible of the arts: motion pictures. The poem begins by excluding serious and pompous arts such as “experimental theatre” and “Grand Opera.” The speaker rejects also “lean quarterlies and swarthy periodicals,” because they, too, are for the elite, not the masses. The speaker does not merely approve of the “Motion Picture Industry” but declares his love and devotion to it. The title’s emphasis on Hollywood as an industry effectively distinguishes the filmmaking world from the realm of art by defining it as a factory producing for the masses.

The second verse paragraph places O’Hara’s preferences in a context. “In time of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love./ And give credit where it’s due.” O’Hara never makes clear what the “crisis” is, and the reference seems to be used as a comical provocation to inflate the reader’s response to the subject.

The speaker rejects a few more candidates for his affection, such as the Catholic Church and the American Legion, and finally begins to discuss his true love: “glorious Silver Screen, tragic Technicolor, amorous Cinemascope,/ stretching Vistavision and startling Stereophonic Sound, with all/ your heavenly dimensions and reverberations and iconoclasms!” The technical innovations of the “industry” are greeted with the same hyperbole that went into their advertisement and promotion. Each of these has its own adjective; some of the adjectives are wildly inappropriate, such as “tragic Technicolor.” The ironic point that O’Hara is making is that there can be no tragedy in the gaudy world of Technicolor.

The next section of the poem contains an even longer list of actors and their famous roles. The list ends with a reaffirmation of the devotion of the speaker: “yes, to you/ and to all you others, the great, the near-great, the featured, the extras/ . . . / my love!”

O’Hara often refers to the popular arts in his poems, and “To the Film Industry in Crisis” is his fullest and wittiest attempt to account for the power that motion pictures have over the public imagination. The poem first shows what films are not—high art—and then shows what they really are—magic. O’Hara does echo the hyperbole of his subject in his own style and reveal its essential function as providing myths by which to live.

“The Day Lady Died”

First published: 1964 (collected in The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, 1971, 1995)

Type of work: Poem

The news of blues singer Billie Holiday’s death turns the poet’s trivial world into a tragic one.

“The Day Lady Died” is one of O’Hara’s “I do this, I do that” poems, until the sudden reversal of the last few lines. The poem begins with the O’Hara speaker recording the details of the day. “It is 12:20 in New York a Friday/ three days after Bastille day, yes/ it is 1959. . . .” The casual description is an effective way of establishing the date and time in which a surprising and momentous event will be recognized.

The speaker switches to describing his own activities, which include getting a shoeshine and planning a train itinerary. He eats, and he buys “an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets/ in Ghana are doing these days.” The preparations for the journey continue, as the speaker gets money at the bank and buys gifts for the people he is going to visit. There is a humorous aside about the bank teller, “Miss Stillwagon,” who for once does not look up the poet’s bank balance; the poet also records his agitation about selecting the proper gifts.

Suddenly, in the midst of these mundane activities, the speaker experiences a moment of deep personal significance. The speaker buys a newspaper and sees “her” face on it. The poem’s title, which refers to Holiday by her nickname, indicates who “her” is, although Holiday is not explicitly named in the poem. The news changes the poet’s physical being (“I am sweating a lot by now,” he remarks). He is then taken from the present moment back to a time when he had heard Holiday sing; he remembers “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.”

The poem sets up its literally breathless moment by its cataloging of the trivial activities of the day. At other times, O’Hara seems to be using lists and names for their own sake, but in this poem there is a clear utility to these techniques, as the revelation transforms the ordinary into something memorable. It is interesting to note that the art of Billie Holiday is seen here as turning a public moment into a private one (she “whispers” a song in public), while O’Hara’s art is to make private moments and experiences public.

“In Memory of My Feelings”

First published: 1958 (collected in The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, 1971, 1995)

Type of work: Poem

The poem explores some of the different selves that live in the poet in order to sort out his authentic self, the artist.

“In Memory of My Feelings” is a surreal poem that attempts to find an authentic self amid the many selves that can be discerned within the speaker. The poet seems to relate these selves to the different feelings he has. For example, in the first section of the poem, he identifies both a “transparent” self that “carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets” as well as a number of “naked selves” that use “pistols” to protect themselves. The division continues as “One of me rushes/ to window #13 and one of me raises his whip. . . .” The speaker is also being hunted by some malign force.

The only unifying element in these contrasting selves is “love of the serpent.” At first, this seems to be a phallic symbol; in the context of the poem, however, the serpent image operates as a symbol for the artist self, which the poet must acknowledge and privilege over all of his other selves. At the end of the poem’s first section, the “transparent selves” are together “like vipers in a pail, writhing and hissing/ without panic, with a certain justice of response. . . .” The section’s final line, in which “the aquiline serpent comes to resemble the Medusa,” unites the various selves by the central symbol of the serpent. The Medusa, therefore, is not a threatening but a positive image.

The second section is a regressive movement dominated by references to those who have sacrificed their lives for the poet. “My father, my uncle,/ my grand-uncle and the several aunts. My/ grand-aunt dying for me. . . .” While this carnage of sacrifice is going on, the speaker is in a suite “in the Grand Hotel/ where mail arrives for my incognito.” The cool facade is sometimes amusing in O’Hara’s poems, but this one is clearly selfish, cruel, and isolated.

The next section begins to reverse the negatives, as the poet writes, “The most arid stretch is often richest.” The speaker adopts the role of a war hero during the French Revolution or under Lord Nelson; however, he “wraps himself” in memories now “against the heat of life.” The hero pose, finally, cannot be sustained, as it is an avoidance of life.

The following section deals with a real incident, a visit to Chicago. The poet begins to see some positive value in multiple selves: “Grace/ to be born and live as variously as possible. The conception/ of the masque barely suggests the sordid identifications.” There is, in contrast to section 3, an acceptance of life in its diversity that includes multiple selves. He then becomes a Hittite, a Chinese man, and a Native American who has “just caught sight of the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.” He then asks “What land is this? so free?” That freedom consists of accepting the “whitemen” and their gift of “the horse I fell in love with on the frieze.” The horse he is given is, as Marjorie Perloff suggests, a work of art. That acceptance of art as central to his existence serves as a transition to the last section of the poem.

The last section of the poem returns to the serpent, which is “coiled around the central figure.” After briefly summarizing the different roles that have been assayed in the poem, the poet realizes what is needed. All the selves “I myself and singly must now kill/ and save the serpent in their midst.” His essential being is as a serpent-artist, so the loss of the other selves becomes a gain that will enable him to live the fullest and truest life.