And don't worry about your lineage poetic or natural. Frank O'Hara More Quotes by Frank O'Hara More Quotes From Frank O'Hara I am not a painter. I am a poet. / Why? I think I would rather be / a painter, but I am not. Frank O'Hara poet poetry thinking I don't believe in god, so I don't have to make elaborately sounded structures. ... Pain always produces logic, which is very bad for you. ... As for measure and other technical apparatus, that's just common sense: if you're going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There's nothing metaphysical about it. Frank O'Hara common-sense pain believe I dislike a great deal of contemporary poetry - all of the past you read is usually quite great - but it is a useful thorn to have in one's side. Frank O'Hara deals sides past And one has eaten and one walks, Frank O'Hara manhattan tears past I've got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I'll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don't want me to go where you go, so I go where you don't want me to. Frank O'Hara valleys pieces want and I have mastered the speed and strength which is the armor of the world. Frank O'Hara armor speed world I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It's more important to confirm the least sincere. The clouds get enough attention as it is. Frank O'Hara regret clouds people My Heart I'm not going to cry all the time nor shall I laugh all the time, I don't prefer one "strain" to another. I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie, not just a sleeper, but also the big, overproduced first-run kind. I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar. And if some aficionado of my mess says "That's not like Frank!," all to the good! I don't wear brown and grey suits all the time, do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera, often. I want my feet to be bare, I want my face to be shaven, and my heart--you can't plan on the heart, but the better part of it, my poetry, is open. Frank O'Hara feet heart running oh mothers you will have made the little tykes Frank O'Hara movie differences mother If you don't appear Frank O'Hara lazy work thinking That's not a run in your stocking, it's a hand on your leg. Frank O'Hara legs running hands the beauty of America, neither cool jazz nor devoured Egyptian Frank O'Hara hero beauty lying I get a little Verlaine Frank O'Hara play sleep thinking I call Frank O'Hara land spirit inspirational My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up. Frank O'Hara eye sky blue It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you've set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over. Frank O'Hara finals plot beautiful Leaf! you are so big! How can you change your color, then just fall! As if there were no such thing as integrity! Frank O'Hara color integrity fall But it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night wondering whether you are any good or not and the only decision you can make is that you did it. Frank O'Hara decision wonder night Destroy yourself, if you don't know! Frank O'Hara ifs knows Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there'll be nothing left with which to venture forth. Why should I share you? Why don't you get rid of someone else for a change? Frank O'Hara broken names heart
