Having a coke with you

Dated: 14th June, 2021

Having a coke with you

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

— Frank O’Hara

What makes for great art?

For me, it is when something is able to make me feel what I couldn’t feel otherwise. Frank O’Hara wrote this ballad in 1960 about his love for Vincent Warren. Six years after he wrote this poem, Frank O’Hara died. I know that he died is not of importance to what the poem speaks of, it is of importance to me. From my reading about the life of Frank O’Hara, he met Vincent in 1959 a mere 7 years before his accidental death. They had what may have been considered a May-December romance as Frank was 13 years older to Vincent. No where was it publicly acknowledged that the love poetry, Frank was so ostentatiously writing was about the love of his life.

For me, having a coke with you is a very intimate love letter that the rest of the world is mere privy to but may never really understand. It is not written in code and yet like all great poetry, I’d say it has realms of code hidden below. It was composed as sources claim when Frank about his trip to Spain where he organised a show called: New Spanish Painting and Sculpture. The poem is quite self-explanatory - everything I can say about it has already been said before.

However, reading about Frank O’Hara and his roommate (and partner Joe LeSueur) describing his love for Vincent as: “These marvelous poems testify to what finally came together for Frank, what he at long last experienced, love and the reciprocation of love—physical, sexual, romantic love, fully and deeply realized.” I am in no way writing an autobiography of Frank O’Hara or an analysis of his love or his joy in having realised what love truly is.

There is something I have read and re-read in the analysis of “Having a coke with you”, that Frank O’Hara favours life over art. That more love can be drawn from life than it can be from art. There is more real in life than there is in the best of art. He favours the company of someone he loves to the most beautiful pieces of art. The experience of loving someone and be loved is above any delights found in the museums across Europe.

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

These two lines are the crux of the poem as it argues about the inherent joy of watching the sunset with someone you love. The poem is simple and so real, that it takes me on a journey each time I encounter it. It reminds me of what love is capable of creating alongside words.