Frank O'Hara

Frank O'Hara (1926-1966) was a poet of the "New York School" Movement, which had strong ties to the growing art culture in New York at the time. Like their visual art friends, their form of poetry was designed to help readers see the world in a new way through new comparisons and ideas. His poem "A Step Away from Them" is particularly enticing as O'Hara provides this new perspective on modern culture as it developed in the mid-20th Century.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171374

A Step Away from Them
BY FRANK O'HARA

It’s my lunch hour, so I go

for a walk among the hum-colored   

cabs. First, 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. Then onto the   

avenue where skirts are flipping   

above heels and blow up over   

grates. The sun is hot, but the   

cabs stir up the air. I look   

at bargains in wristwatches. There   

are cats playing in sawdust.

                                          On

to Times Square, where the sign

blows smoke over my head, and higher   

the waterfall pours lightly. A   

Negro stands in a doorway with a   

toothpick, languorously agitating.   

A blonde chorus girl clicks: he   

smiles and rubs his chin. Everything   

suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of   

a Thursday.

                Neon in daylight is a   

great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would   

write, as are light bulbs in daylight.   

I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET’S   

CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of   

Federico Fellini, è bell’ attrice.

And chocolate malted. A lady in   

foxes on such a day puts her poodle   

in a cab.

             There are several Puerto   

Ricans on the avenue today, which   

makes it beautiful and warm. First   

Bunny died, then John Latouche,   

then Jackson Pollock. But is the   

earth as full as life was full, of them?   

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. I   

used to think they had the Armory   

Show there.

                A glass of papaya juice   

and back to work. My heart is in my   

pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.

One of the biggest devices used by O'Hara here is his extensive use of imagery as he depicts a largely materialistic world that, in many ways, did not leave much room for artistic expression in the forefront of society (of course, looking back, it became a huge part of our history). When O'Hara uses phrases such as "laborers feed their dirty   

glistening torsos sandwiches and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets on", he has essentially made this new kind of connection between pop culture and poetry that few before him had been able to do. In addition to that, he includes references to a blonde girl, an African-American, and Puerto Ricans, something which we can link to the cultural perception of America as the "melting pot". However, a lot of these modern and pop culture connections seem to be dissolved in the final stanza of this free verse poem. O'Hara writes "A glass of papaya juice and back to work. My heart is in my pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy". Just like that, it seems like the entire building up by O'Hara has been thrown out the window. Papaya juice (not sure if there was some phenomenon for it in the mid-20th Century) seems like something well off the beaten path from "Coca-Cola" and, per today's terminology of "hipster", seems to definitely fit the bill. The same can probably be said for the book of poems by a French artist. 

Perhaps the breaking of modern ties connects to the possible theme: Poetry is so entwined into modern culture until you go back to the surface of it all.