Monday, June 27, 2022

Poem by Frank O'Hara

A while ago I read the poem "Music," in the 1964 book Lunch Poems, by Frank O'Hara (City Lights Books).

The poem, the first in the book, is dated 1953.  Mr. O'Hara died in 1966, at age forty, two years after Lunch Poems was published.

There is a phrase in the poem--just part of a sentence--which has stayed with me; I have re-read it several times.

Mr. O'Hara wrote:

It's like a locomotive on the march, the season 

      of distress and clarity