Why I'm Not a Painter and Other Poems

Frank O'Hara composed poems 'any time, any place', collaborating with - or directly inspired by - a vibrant circle of artists, dancers, musicians and poets. For O'Hara, the city was a place of endless possibility, and he brilliantly captured the pace and rhythms, the quandaries and exhilarations, of mid-twentieth-century city life. His work radiates wit, immediacy and the grace of living 'as variously as possible'. As Mark Ford notes in his introduction to this new selection, 'O'Hara's hip, glamorous, freewheeling self-celebrations both reflected and helped disseminate a new kind of confidence and daring in American poetry.'