Frank ohara having a coke with you
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Mark Leidner on “Having ‘Having a Coke with You’ with You”
Having “Having a Coke with You” with You
You asked me if I knew the poem “Having a Coke with You”
I said I vaguely remembered it but didn’t really
so you recited it in its entirety. We were walking
from somewhere up by City Hall down toward South Street
and the whole time you were reciting it I was wondering
“Was that the last line of the poem?” after each line
and each time I thought that, I thought it even more
because as the poem got longer the fact that you were reciting it
from memory became incrementally harder to believe
until about two-thirds of the way through the poem
I stopped thinking about how long it was and just started listening
which I had been, but only a little, because of all that. Anyway
then I started listening to it completely, believing
the poem itself to be the sole reason you were reciting it
but as soon as you finished you started to talk about how
you used to think that that poem was just about how
liberatingly banal being in love with someone was
but then you said you’d started to think more recently
it was more about the idiocy of caring about art at all
when you could spend all that energy caring about someone
you loved instead, and you said you were wondering where
I stood
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At a press conference today Gov. Inslee told everyone to call the older people in their lives and ask them “not to be going to dinner parties, and coffee klatches, and sewing needle get-togethers," which is the right thing to do for our health and for the health of the people we love.
But while you're following the Governor's orders and scolding the olds in your life, I suggest you do so in a charming way full of particular personal details! Nobody will believe you love them otherwise. Among other things, Frank O'Hara's "Having a Coke With You," which you can find in his beautifully uneven collected works, available at local bookstores, accomplishes a romantic version of this task. Find inspiration here and tailor your declaration of love accordingly.
A few thoughts:
• If you're new to the poem, you're just going to have to blow past all those initial European city names and get to the good stuff. The whole point there is just for him to say that spending time with his boyfriend is more fun than going on vacation, and then to joke about how traveling can kind of suck anyway. A welcome message in quarantine, for certain. Imagine being sick to your stomach on a foreign street and not knowing where the trusty bathrooms are. Just imagine.
• The poem is about how real-li
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By Frank O’Hara
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