One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

~ I am in love with this poem. It is one of the poems that makes you read it on and on. Firstly, the poem tells us that even the art of losing is hard to deal with, it happens to everyone and everyone gets used to its pain. Everyone will lose something as time passes by, but in the end they just have to let it go. You will lose places, names, things etc. Nevertheless, in the end Elizabesh shows us that people will come to a point in their life that they will lose greater things but still I think "the art of losing isn't hard to master".

"All my life I have lived and behaved very much like the sandpiper - just running down the edges of different countries and continents, 'looking for something'." ~ Elizabeth Bishop

Why I Am Not A Painter by Frank O'Hara

~ Incredible poem. It is very clear that except poems O'Hara puts a great value on art (painting). I also liked how he linked Sardines with Oranges, which both Mike and O'Hara wanted to include in their works but there wasn't enough space, instead they named their works Oranges and Sardines. "My poem is finished and I haven't mention orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES." For me this is the best ending ever from all of his poems.

~ Overall, I consider all of Frank O'Hara's poems brilliant. I like that he wrote poetry from whatever happened around him. He was inspired from everything that surrounded him. In an interview he said that "What is happening to me, allowing for lies and exaggerations which I try to avoid, goes into my poems. I don't think my experinces are clarified or made beautiful for myself or anyone else, they are just here in whatever form I can find them". Nevertheless, I hate the way he died, to me it seems such a ridiculuous death. What matters is that he was valued in his own day and his poems and his greatness has greatly increased since his death. Thank god he came to earth to bring all of his poems. May his poems live on forever.

Frank O´Hara reads "Having a coke with you"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDLwivcpFe8&feature=player_embedded

This is a poem from O'Hara in 1966, he presents "Having a Coke with You" just before his death in July of the same year.

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
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and 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
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

—Frank O'Hara

~ Fantastic poem. Sometimes even funny "partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian, partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt". He is reading his poem with so much joy, passion and sincerity and you can clearly see that he has been in love with life. Thank god he came to earth to bring all of his poems.

My Heart by Frank O'Hara

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9TRUARUvTI&NR=1

My Heart by Frank O'Hara

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.

~ From all of Frank O'Hara's poems, this is the one that I love the most. He seems to have written anything that came in his mind without any hesitation and I really admire his courage. I love every bit of this poem from the very beginning till the end and I understand and feel it. He has great instincts and he is a hell of an inspiration for anyone. All of the sentences in this poem have a sublime message. The first two sentences "I am not goint to cry all the time, nor shall I laugh all the time" reminds me of Socrates: "Rembember always, that everything is ephemeral(temporary); then you will not be very happy at happiness and not too sad at suffering."