Frank O'Hara Explication

Carla Castillo
Mr. Gallagher
Period 2

Frank O’Hara Explication

In Having a Coke with you by Frank O’Hara, O’Hara tries to send out a message to his readers that that anything in comparison to love seems small. He brings the reader into his poem by the title being the actual first line of the poem. Through this poem O’Hara wants the reader to visualize all these beautiful places around the world and these marvelous paintings. Then he wants the reader to realize that these things are all master pieces but can never measure up to finding the missing part of you in someone else.

Having a Coke with you by Frank O’Hara pulls the reader into to this subtle love story that he creates of a man telling the woman he loves that all experiences in life would be meaningless with out her. In his poem he lists all the places he has seen and how they mean nothing in comparison to her. He says
“San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona”
These are some of the most beautiful places in Europe and he says that having a coke with this mystery woman is more fun than all of those places.

The speaker of the poem begins to describe his other half and uses lots of repetition he says
“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” (O’Hara)
This way of having the reader describe their love on is definitely effective because it shows the reader that it isn’t just some ones looks or their money or one quality about them that causes their other half to fall in love with them it is every single thing about them that causes love to occur.
The speaker talks about how things that used to amaze him now seem ordinary.
“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”(O’Hara)
the speaker wants to prove their love towards the other person so as they go on and on about all the things in life they have seen or experienced they realize that none of that matter anymore because love has blinded them of all things of beauty.


The speaker of the poem is madly in love and nothing else could change that. Whether he is with his love in Barcelona or at New York at a café it doesn’t matter the only thing that does is her. He says “thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time” The speaker wants every moment of the rest of his life to be in her presence with her by his side. Love makes the world go round is definitely something the speaker of O’Hara’s poem definitely believes in.

In Having a Coke with You by Frank O’Hara, O’Hara tries to send out a message to his readers that that anything in comparison to love seems small. In O’Hara made his speaker into someone who had seen the world, some one who knew beauties that other men had only dreamed of. Until that point his speaker was convinced he had all that he needed or could ever want until he had her in his life. O’Hara wanted his readers to see the vital importance of love and how with out it all other things seem meaningless.