Lunch Poems

By Frank O'Hara,

Book cover of Lunch Poems

Book description

Important poems by the late New York poet published in The New American Poetry, Evergreen Review, Floating Bear and stranger places. Often this poet, strolling through the noisy splintered glare of a Manhattan noon, has paused at a sample Olivetti to type up thirty or forty lines of ruminations, or…


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Why read it?

1 author picked Lunch Poems as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Several times now, I have given this slim book of poems to students and encouraged them to carry it in their bags, to read it at random moments throughout the day—instead of, say, looking at their phones. O'Hara's ebullient celebrations of daily life, musings on love, culture, and poetry itself never fail to inspire.

Whether it's a poem about sharing a coke with a beloved or the death of Billie Holiday, O'Hara's work makes me want to stay alert to the possibility of the wonderous, ordinary facts of life on Earth. If I were a doctor, I would prescribe everyone…

From Tina's list on not all poets are dead.

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