Frank O'Hara Quotes & Sayings

... and I'll be happy here and happy there, full
of tea and tears — Frank O'Hara

O my enormous piano, you are not like being outdoors — Frank O'Hara

In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love. — Frank O'Hara

When I am feeling
depressed and anxious
sullen
all you have to do is
take off your clothes
and all is wiped away
revealing life's
tenderness. — Frank O'Hara

I embraced a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained. — Frank O'Hara

Life perpetuated in parti-colored loves
and beautiful lies all in different languages. — Frank O'Hara

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love. — Frank O'Hara

My heart is in my/ pocket. It is poems by Pierre Reverdy. — Frank O'Hara

Autobiographia Literaria"
When I was a child
I played by myself in a
corner of the schoolyard
all alone.
I hated dolls and I
hated games, animals were
not friendly and birds
flew away.
If anyone was looking
for me I hid behind a
tree and cried out "I am
an orphan."
And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine! — Frank O'Hara

I can't even find a pond small enough
to drown in without being ostentatious — Frank O'Hara

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

... 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 — Frank O'Hara

There's too much lime in the world and not enough gin — Frank O'Hara

You just go on your nerve. — Frank O'Hara

I take this for myself, and you take up the thread of my life between your teeth, tin thread and tarnished with abuse, you shall still hear as long as the beast in me maintains its taciturn power to close my lids in tears, and my loins move yet in the ennobling pursuit of all the worlds you have left me alone in, and would be the dolorous distraction from, while you summon your army of anguishes which is a million hooting blood vessels on the eyes and in the ears at that instant before death. — Frank O'Hara

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 ... — Frank O'Hara

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. — Frank O'Hara

But to be part of the treetops and the blueness, invisible
the iridescent darknesses beyond,
silent, listening to
the air becoming no air becoming air again — Frank O'Hara

That's not a run in your stocking, it's a hand on your leg. — Frank O'Hara

See how free we are! as a nation of persons. — Frank O'Hara

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

I don't think I want to win anything I think I want to die unadorned. — Frank O'Hara

Oh say can you see Alma. The darling
of Them. All her friends were artists.
They alone have memories. They alone
love flowers. They alone give parties
and die. Poor Alma. They alone.
She died,
and it was as if all the jewels in the world
had heaved a sigh. The seismograph
at Fordham university registered, for once,
a spiritual note. How like a sliver
in her own short fat muscular foot.
She loved the Western World, though
there are some who say she isn't really dead. — Frank O'Hara

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

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

I seem to be defying fate, or am I avoiding it? — Frank O'Hara

To be cool,
decisive,
precise,
yes,
while the barn door hits you in the face — Frank O'Hara

And one has eaten and one walks,
past the magazines with nudes
and the posters for bullfight and
the Manhattan Storage Warehouse,
which they'll soon tear down. — Frank O'Hara

The stars fell one by one into his eyes and burnt. — Frank O'Hara

As for measure and other technical apparatus, that's just common sense: if you're going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There's nothing metaphysical about it. Unless, of course, you flatter yourself into thinking that what you're experiencing is yearning. — Frank O'Hara

I don't believe in god, so I don't have to make elaborately sounded structures ... Pain always produces logic, which is very bad for you ... As for measure and other technical apparatus, that's just common sense: if you're going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There's nothing metaphysical about it. — Frank O'Hara

I'm so damned literary
and at the same time the waters rushing past remind
me of nothing
I'm so damn empty — Frank O'Hara

I am stuck in traffic in a taxicab
which is typical
and not just of modern life — Frank O'Hara

After the first glass of vodka
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
of matches is purple and brown and is called La Petite and comes from Sweden
for they are words that you know and that is all you know words not their feelings or what they mean and you write because you know them not because you understand them because you don't you are stupid and lazy and will never be great but you do what you know because what else is there? — Frank O'Hara

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. — Frank O'Hara

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

I dislike a great deal of contemporary poetry - all of the past you read is usually quite great - but it is a useful thorn to have in one's side. — Frank O'Hara

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

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

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

When
I think of all the things I've been thinking of
I feel insane — Frank O'Hara

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. — Frank O'Hara

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 the first time — Frank O'Hara

In retrospect, the saddest moment of one's life would seem to be that in which one first became aware that sensibility must be protected by intelligence if it is to survive living. It is that realization that puts the bloodshed into adolescence. And the lack of that realization makes the rest of life a bloodshed. — Frank O'Hara

There is a geography which holds its hands just so far from the breast and pushes you away, crying so. — Frank O'Hara

I miss you always
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine
although I never weep
and hold you in my
heart with a very real
humor you'd be proud of — Frank O'Hara

There were occasionally
rifts in the cloud where the face
of a woman appeared, frowning. — Frank O'Hara

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. — Frank O'Hara

When I die, don't come, I wouldn't want a leaf
to turn away from the sun
it loves it there.
There's nothing so spiritual about being happy
but you can't miss a day of it, because it doesn't last. — Frank O'Hara

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. — Frank O'Hara

The artificial is always innocent. — Frank O'Hara

I'm becoming
the street.
Who are you in love with?
me?
Straight against the light I cross. — Frank O'Hara

I am ashamed of my century, but I have to smile. — Frank O'Hara

The stars blink like a hairnet that was dropped / on a seat and now it is lying in the alley behind / the theatre where my play is echoed by dying voices. — Frank O'Hara

I am moved by the multitudes of your intelligence and sometimes, returning, I become the sea - in love with your speed, your heaviness and breath. — Frank O'Hara

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 — Frank O'Hara

Dear:

I am dying
without you, and I won't be dying long. But don't come.

Best always,
Frank — Frank O'Hara

Willow trees, willow trees they remind me of Desdemona
I'm so damned literary
and at the same time the waters rushing past remind
me of nothing — Frank O'Hara

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

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

A man was the cause of it.
An unarmed man with a weapon. — Frank O'Hara

Grace / to be born and live as variously as possible — Frank O'Hara

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

Kerouac: You're ruining American poetry, O'Hara.
O'Hara: That's more than you ever did for it, Kerouac — Frank O'Hara

And don't worry about your lineage poetic or natural. — Frank O'Hara

There should be so much more, not of orange, of words, of how terrible orange is and life. — Frank O'Hara

Stars are out and there is sea
enough beneath the glistening earth
to bear me toward the future
which is not so dark. I see. — Frank O'Hara

V. R. Lang

You are so serious, as if
a glacier spoke in your ear
or you had to walk through
the great gate of Kiev
to get to the living room.

I worry about this because I
love you. As if it weren't grotesque
enough that we live in hydrogen
and breathe like atomizers, you
have to think I'm a great architect!

and you float regally by on your
incessant escalator, calm, a jungle queen.
Thinking it a steam shovel. Looking
a little uneasy. But you are yourself
again, yanking silver beads off your neck.

Remember, the Russian Easter Overture
is full of bunnies. Be always high,
full of regard and honor and lanolin. Oh
ride horseback in pink linen, be happy!
and ride with your beads on, because it rains. — Frank O'Hara

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? — Frank O'Hara

And I have mastered the speed and strength which is the
armor of the world. — Frank O'Hara

You know we've all sinned a lot against science
so we really ought to be as available as an apple
on a bough
pleasant thought fresh air free love cross-pollenization
oh oh god how I'd love to dream let alone sleep — Frank O'Hara

all I want is a room up there
and you in it — Frank O'Hara

They were too young then to know what they would ultimately need from a barren and heart-sore life ... — Frank O'Hara

The beauty of America, neither cool jazz nor devoured Egyptian
heroes, lies in
lives in the darkness I inhabit in the midst of sterile millions — Frank O'Hara

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. — Frank O'Hara

The moon passes into clouds
so hurt by the street lights
of your glance oh my heart — Frank O'Hara

I love you. I love you,
but I'm turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist. — Frank O'Hara

I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. — Frank O'Hara

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

Oh Lana Turner we love you get up — Frank O'Hara

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

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. — Frank O'Hara

My Heart
I'm not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don't prefer one "strain" to another.
I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind.
I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar. And if some aficionado of my mess says "That's not like Frank!," all to the good! I don't wear brown and grey suits all the time, do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,
often. I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart
you can't plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open. — Frank O'Hara

One never need 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. — Frank O'Hara

The waves wash in, warm and salty,
leaving your eyebrows white and
the edge of your cheekbone. Your ear
aches. You are lonely. On the
underside of a satin leaf, hot
with shade, a scorpion sleeps. And
one Sunday I will be shot brushing
my teeth. I am a native of this island. — Frank O'Hara

I am not a painter. I am a poet. / Why? I think I would rather be / a painter, but I am not. — Frank O'Hara

If you don't appear
at all one day they think you're lazy
or dead. — Frank O'Hara

Destroy yourself, if you don't know! — Frank O'Hara

Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern. — Frank O'Hara

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas! / You really are beautiful! Pearls, / harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! — Frank O'Hara

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

For Grace, After a Party"

You do not always know what I am feeling.
Last night in the warm spring air while I was
blazing my tirade against someone who doesn't
interest
me, it was love for you that set me
afire,

and isn't it odd? for in rooms full of
strangers my most tender feelings
writhe and
bear the fruit of screaming. Put out your hand,
isn't there
an ashtray, suddenly, there? beside
the bed? And someone you love enters the room
and says wouldn't
you like the eggs a little

different today?
And when they arrive they are
just plain scrambled eggs and the warm weather
is holding. — Frank O'Hara

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's more important to confirm the least sincere. The clouds get enough attention as it is ... — Frank O'Hara

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

My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent
and he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets.
He has several likenesses, like stars and years, like numerals. — Frank O'Hara

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 Negres
of Genet, but I don't, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness — Frank O'Hara

Leaf! you are so big!
How can you change your
color, then just fall!
As if there were no
such thing as integrity! — Frank O'Hara

... my words are love
which willfully parades in
its room, refusing to move. — Frank O'Hara

And always embrace things, people earth sky stars, as I do, freely and with the appropriate sense of space. — Frank O'Hara

When you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go — Frank O'Hara