"When I die," the poet wrote, "don't come. I wouldn't want a leaf to turn away from the sun." But they did come. 35 years ago when New York poet, some say the New York poet, Frank O'Hara died. Even today, perhaps moreso today than then, fellow poets and poetry lovers praise O'Hara's skill, his trademark scribbled verse, his lyric lines about lunch, walking uptown, buying cigarettes, about art, about parties, about men, about women but mainly about New York. O'Hara's central place in the New York School of Poets through the post-war boom years of the fine arts in that city is still used to explain that time. "There's nothing spiritual about being happy" he wrote, "but you can't miss a day of it because it doesn't last." Frank O'Hara, no pretensions just poems.
