Frank O'Hara Quotes

Quotes about:

• O my enormous piano, you are not like being outdoors

  Frank O'Hara

  Piano, Enormous

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.216, Univ of California Press

  45 Copy quote

• 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

  Frank O'Hara

  Coffee, Love You, Bed

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.371, Univ of California Press

  33 Copy quote

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

  Frank O'Hara

  Inspiring, Men, Want

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.197, Univ of California Press

  28 Copy quote

• Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.

  Frank O'Hara

  Beautiful, Interesting, Personality

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.202, Univ of California Press

  28 Copy quote

• It may be that poetry makes life's nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time.

  Frank O'Hara

  Intangible Quality, Events, Details

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.500, Univ of California Press

  27 Copy quote

• And always embrace things, people earth sky stars, as I do, freely and with the appropriate sense of space.

  Frank O'Hara

  Stars, Sky, Space

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.307, Univ of California Press

  19 Copy quote

• I have, for my own projected works and ideas, only the silliest and dewiest of hopes; no matter what, I am romantic enough or sentimental enough to wish to contribute something to life's fabric, to the world's beauty.... [S]imply to live does not justify existence, for life is a mere gesture on the surface of the earth, and death a return to that from which we had never been wholly separated; but oh to leave a trace, no matter how faint, of that brief gesture! For someone, some day, may find it beautiful!

  Frank O'Hara

  Beautiful, Ideas, Wish

  23 Copy quote

• the only truth is face to face, the poem whose words become your
  mouth
  and dying in black and white we fight for what we love, not are

  Frank O'Hara

  Truth, Fighting, Black And White

  Frank O'Hara (1969). “Odes”

  25 Copy quote

• Grace / to be born and live as variously as possible

  Frank O'Hara

  Grace, Born

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.256, Univ of California Press

  19 Copy quote

• Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas! / You really are beautiful! Pearls, / harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins!

  Frank O'Hara

  Beautiful, Chocolate, Aspirin

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.15, Univ of California Press

  15 Copy quote

• I don't ... like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, 'Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.'

  Frank O'Hara

  Running, Stars, Knives

  9 Copy quote

• I embraced a cloud but when I soared it rained.

  Frank O'Hara

  Clouds

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.201, Univ of California Press

  6 Copy quote

• The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages. In all modesty, I confess that it may be the death of literature as we know it.

  Frank O'Hara

  Two, Literature, May

  10 Copy quote

• I wonder if the course of narcissism through the ages would have been any different had Narcissus first peered into a cesspool. He probably did.

  Frank O'Hara

  Age, Different, Firsts

  Frank O'Hara (1977). “Early writing”, Bookpeople

  3 Copy quote

• You just go on your nerve.

  Frank O'Hara

  Nerves, Goes On

  "He does this, he does that" by Charles Bainbridge, www.theguardian.com. July 11, 2003.

  7 Copy quote

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

  Frank O'Hara

  Lying, Tree, Heaven

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.197, Univ of California Press

  5 Copy quote

• A man was the cause of it all. An unarmed man with a weapon.

  Frank O'Hara

  Men, Weapons, Causes

  "The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara".

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Frank O'Hara

  New York, Believe, Light

  Frank O'Hara (1965). “Love Poems (tentative Title)”

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Frank O'Hara

  Mother, Hate, Kids

  Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery (2014). “Lunch Poems: 50th Anniversary Edition”, p.42, City Lights Books

  5 Copy quote

• I loved her fright, which was against me into the air! and the diamond white of her forelock which seemed to smart with thoughts as my heart smarted with life! and she'd toss her head with the pain and paw the air and champ the bit, as if I were Endymion and she, moon-like, hated to love me.

  Frank O'Hara

  Pain, Smart, Heart

  Frank O'Hara (1967). “Meditations in an Emergency”, p.12, Grove Press

  13 Copy quote

• I wouldn’t want to be faster or greener than now if you were with me O you were the best of all my days!

  Frank O'Hara

  Want, Faster, Greener

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.30, Univ of California Press

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Frank O'Hara

  Party, Rain, Love You

  Frank O'Hara (2014). “Lunch Poems: 50th Anniversary Edition”, p.64, City Lights Books

  12 Copy quote

• If I am ever to find these trees meaningful I must have you by the hand. As it is, they stretch dusty fingers into an obscure sky, and the snow looks up like a face dirtied with tears. Should I cry out and see what happens? There could only be a stranger wandering in this landscape, cold, unfortunate, himself frozen fast in wintry eyes.

  Frank O'Hara

  Meaningful, Eye, Hands

  Frank O'Hara (1967). “Meditations in an Emergency”, p.19, Grove Press

  8 Copy quote

• Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies.

  Frank O'Hara

  Mother, Kids, Giving

  6 Copy quote

• life perpetuated in parti-colored loves and beautiful lies all in different languages.

  Frank O'Hara

  Beautiful, Lying, Different

  Frank O'Hara (2005). “In Memory of My Feelings: A Selection of Poems”, p.81, The Museum of Modern Art

  6 Copy quote

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