Having a Coke with You by Frank O'Hara

It's a love poem for a real person — Vincent Warren, a dancer who was in a relationship with O'Hara. The speaker cheerfully and casually insists that being with the one he loves is far more rewarding than visiting any renowned location or admiring any famous artwork. That's the crux of the poem, and O'Hara makes it feel utterly persuasive.

O'Hara worked at MoMA and truly loved art, so the references aren't just for show—they're his genuine frame of reference. He uses them as the highest standard he knows, demonstrating that the beloved easily meets that standard. It's his way of saying: I recognize great beauty, and you embody it.

It's intentionally mundane—a mass-produced soft drink, contrasting sharply with a Renaissance fresco. O'Hara includes it in the title to emphasize that the poem cherishes the everyday rather than the grandiose. Sharing a Coke represents a small, genuine, one-of-a-kind moment, and that's precisely what the poem advocates for.

Yes — it's a great example of New York School poetry. This movement featured poets like John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch, who preferred everyday language, actual place names, pop culture references, and a quick, free-flowing style. They aimed to make a poem feel as vibrant and immediate as a chat with a friend.

Vincent Warren was a Canadian ballet dancer whom O'Hara met in 1959. Warren was roughly ten years younger than O'Hara, and their relationship served as the inspiration for some of O'Hara's most acclaimed love poems. After O'Hara's death, Warren acknowledged the dedication in various interviews.

O'Hara intentionally wrote against the established norms of English poetry. He aimed for the poem to capture the spontaneity of thoughts as they occur—just like how we speak when we're excited or in love. Rhyme and meter would have given it a polished feel, and that’s the last thing this poem should be.

It doesn't claim that art is bad—O'Hara cherished art throughout his life. Instead, it suggests that art serves as a stand-in for genuine presence, and not a very good one at that. Paintings are static; people are dynamic. Portraits don’t respond or smile back. The poem uses art as a contrast to highlight what makes a living person unique and irreplaceable, rather than to undermine the value of art itself.

It transformed the way love poems could be expressed. Before O'Hara, American love poetry often leaned towards the grand and symbolic. This poem, however, is specific, humorous, and packed with brand names, city names, and real people. It showed that a love poem could be both touching and sound like everyday conversation, influencing countless poets in the years that followed.