Moving to France with You

I have been living in France for two and a half months now, and lately I’ve found myself missing certain aspects of New York. So, today, I re-read one of my favorite New York School poems, “Having a Coke with You” by Frank O’Hara. The New York School of poets began in the early 1960s and included O’Hara, John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch, as well as the painters Willem DeKoonig and Jasper Johns (among others). O’Hara was interested in both music and in art. For much of his life, he even worked as an assistant curator at The Museum of Modern Art.

Having a Coke with You
     by Frank O'Hara 

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne   

or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona   

partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian

partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt

partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches

partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary   

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 

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   

and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism   

just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or   

at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow 

    me   

and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them   

when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank   

or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully   

as the horse

                   it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience

which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

Frank O’Hara, “Having a Coke with You” from The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Copyright © 1971 by Mauren Granville-Smith, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank O'Hara. Used by the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc, www.randomhouse.com/category/poetry/.

Source: The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara (1995) via PoetryFoundation.org

The subject of art is featured prominently throughout this poem. O’Hara places a mundane activity in the foreground, as the title itself is simply “Having a Coke with You”. This contrasts sharply with the first line of the poem which immediately thrusts five exotic places upon the reader. One of the reasons that the poem works so well is that the narrator refuses to romanticize the places that he mentions. The activities that occur on his vacations include, “getting sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona”. The irony of this is that often, while traveling, the most unusual and unpleasant experiences become the best stories from a trip.

The remainder of the first stanza plays up the complexity of sitting in a park with someone the narrator loves. He starts off by declaring his love for “you” and then, unexpectedly admits his partner’s love of something as concrete and practical as yoghurt. After this line, his language becomes more creative, as he brings the “fluorescent orange” color of the tulips into the poem, as well as the “secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary”. However, it is the last line of this stanza that stands out. O’Hara writes: “we are drifting back and forth between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles”. This line is remarkable in that the narrator chooses to use this simile to describe the setting of drinking a coke, instead of a painting or a more exotic location.

The rest of the poem consists of shorter stanzas and more varied line breaks as it shifts away from the park setting and moves towards art. O’Hara mentions several specific artists, art movements, and art works during the last few lines of the poem. He begins this section with a two-word line that begins, “I look / at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world.” Instead of dwelling on this line, he then mentions Futurism, Impressionists, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Marino Marini, and Nude Descending a Staircase. He makes it clear that he is knowledgeable about art, and then declares that certain artists “used to wow” him and asks “what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them / when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank / or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully / as the horse.” It is in listing the flaws, instead of the virtues, of things that are usually seen as overtly-romantic, that the narrator is able to describe the strength of his love for an individual.

 “Having a Coke with You” exudes quirkiness, yet at the heart, it’s quite a tender poem. Perhaps the thing that I like best about it is its conversational style. Paired with the long lines and sparse punctuation, it creates a sort of breathless excitement that builds upon itself the way a new relationship does.

Having moved to France because of a relationship, I find myself wanting to go to all of the places that O’Hara mentions in his poem, but I also find myself enjoying a night of just sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, or a can of Coke.